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The Impressions 

of an Englishman in 

America 




WILLIAM J. WOODLEY 



The Impressions 

of an Englishman 

in America 



By 
William Woodley 

Author of 

The Adventures of an Imperial Yeoman 

in South Africa 1899 to 1902 



New -York 

William J. Woodley 

1910 



Copyrigrht, 1910, by 
William J. Woodley 



J. F. TAPLEY CO 

NEW YORK • 



CCU278460 



PEEFACE 

In offering to the public this book on 
my impressions of America I do not in 
any way attempt to criticise the Gov- 
ernment, the laws, the institutions, or 
the policies of the United States. 

Many writers who visit America and 
afterwards write a book, see only one 
side of the country. Furnished with 
letters of introduction to the best known 
people, they are received with the splen- 
did hospitality which rich Americans are 
so well noted for, but they have not 
had the opportunity of judging America 
as those who have to fight their way by 
the sweat of their brain, or their brow. 

The writer was, — and is, — 

William Woodley. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 
UNITED STATES 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

I OuTWAED Bound 3 

II New York 16 

III The New York American 34 

IV Philadelphia and Boston 55 

V San Francisco and Salt Lake City . .67 

PART II 
CANADA 

I The Story of Quebec 101 

II Montreal 114 

III Toronto 139 

IV The North West Indians 152 

V Emigrants 170 



The Impressions 

of an Englishman in 

America 



PAET I 
UNITED STATES 



Impressions of An 
Englishman 

CHAPTER I 

OUTWAKD BOUND 

EUSTON STATION rings witli 
greetings, and partings, masses of 
trunks have been packed in the ^^boat 
special, '^ the whistle blows, and the 
train slowly moves out of the station. 
As I lean out of the window I catch 
a glimpse of the tearful eyes of the 
women, amidst the waving of handker- 
chiefs and the shouts of ''good luck'' 
from the men. I am one of many hun- 
dreds about to cross the Atlantic on our 
way to the New World. 
s 



4 Impressions of 

Many of us are actuated by the same 
motive ; unable to make the headway we 
thought we might have made in crowded 
Europe, we are going to start life afresh 
in this new and wonderful country we 
have read and heard so much about; 
many succeed beyond their most san- 
guine expectations, others will sink 
under their difficulties. 

In a few hours we are aboard the great 
ocean liner at Liverpool. I cannot help 
wondering what the future will bring, 
and what experiences await me. 

The engines start, the ship's bugle 
sounds, and as we make our way out of 
the harbour we sit down to our first 
meal in our floating hotel. Are you a 
good sailor? seemed the universal ques- 
tion. Notwithstanding their replies, I 
could not but observe that before that 
meal was over, many retired with some 
precipitation. 



An Englishman 5 

Our first stopping place is Queens- 
town, where a crowd of Irish emigrants 
came on board with bundles and boxes 
tied up with rope. An American gen- 
tleman remarked to me: ^*New York 
is ruled by the Irish — they are the 
leaders in all the political demonstra- 
tions, and the most powerful party in 
all elections. The New York election is 
carried by the Irish; and the New York 
election has the greatest influence upon 
elections in other states. Yet the Irish 
do not amalgamate with the Americans, 
but hold themselves apart to their own 
manners and customs; they are just as 
much against the institutions of the 
States, as they were against the Gov- 
ernment at home. Still, there is no 
doubt the Irish improve in the States 
and many of them get wealthy and oc- 
cupy high political positions.'^ 

After a few days on a steamship one 



Impressions of 



gets, as they say, in America, *^ located," 
and with the aid of a discreet tip to the 
table steward I secured a seat next the 
people I thought would prove the most 
congenial. 

A cantankerous old colonel who sat op- 
posite to me used to declare from the 
time he got up, until he went to bed, 
that everything on the boat was abso- 
lutely rotten from stem to stern ; he said 
the stewards were insolent scoundrels; 
and the whiskey was poison. To my 
right there was a Mr. and Mrs. F., 
really charming people, on their honey- 
moon, but he was quite fifty while she 
was a pretty girl of eighteen ; on my left 
was a big handsome Scotchman whom 
we called Sammy, who seemed to divide 
his time between pretty Mrs. F. and the 
smoking room bar; and next him, was 
the American gentleman I had spoken to 
at Queenstown. 



An Englishman 7 

Gentlemen, in the Old World sense of 
the term, are the same everywhere, and 
an American gentleman knows how to do 
the honours of his country to a stranger 
as well as any one on Earth; unfortu- 
nately this class is a very small one in 
New York, so my Queenstown acquaint- 
ance cannot be represented as affording 
a specimen of the whole. 

To one unaccustomed to traveling by 
sea, night is a very impressive time 
aboard a ship, and though its novelty 
has long worn off, it never ceases to have 
an interest and charm for me. 

The gloom through which the great 
liner holds its direct and certain course, 
the rushing water, plainly heard, but 
dimly seen; the broad, white glistening 
track, that follows in the vessel's wake; 
the men on the lookout forward, who are 
just visible against the dark sky; the 
melancholy sighing of the wind, the 



8 Impressions of 

gleaming forth of light from every crev- 
ice and tiny nook about the ship. 

This floating town upon the sea, with 
every pulse and artery of her huge body 
swollen and bursting under the great 
strain, she ploughs her way through the 
waves day and night; imagine the wind 
howling, the sea roaring, the rain 
beating — all in a furious array against 
her. 

Picture the sky both dark and wild, 
and the clouds in sympathy with the 
waves. Add to this the hoarse shouts 
of the seamen, the gurgling in and out 
of water through the scuppers, with 
every now and then the striking of a 
heavy sea upon the ship with the deep, 
dead, heavy sound of thunder. 

The labouring of the ship in that trou- 
bled sea during that stormy night I shall 
never forget; what it is like on a wild 
night in the Atlantic, it is impossible 



An Englishman 9 

for the most vivid imagination to de- 
scribe. 

Every day is much tlie same at sea. 
As we approached Newfoundland we saw 
numbers of icebergs, which had floated 
down from the Arctic regions. An ice- 
berg is truly a magnificent sight, and 
almost impossible to conceive. Imagine 
a lump of ice as large as St. PauPs 
Cathedral with the moon shining upon 
it; at night it resembles a fairy castle, 
but Heaven help the ship that should 
touch it. 

Next day the storm is over, the sun 
shines upon the deck, and the passen- 
gers, forgetting the night and their sea- 
sickness, emerge from their cabins. As I 
look down into the steerage, and see men 
and women and children huddled to- 
gether, it comes home to me what a dif- 
ference money makes in the world; for 
the want of a little money, you are 



lo Impressions of 

herded like the animals on a cattle boat 
— compelled to sleep in a dark hole with 
at least four others, who perhaps do not 
remove their clothes or wash during the 
whole voyage, '* water being precious in 
the steerage/' Exposed to the rigid 
steamship laws for emigrants, and fed 
with badly cooked, unsavoury food with- 
out any pretense of courtesy; while for 
a few extra dollars or pounds, you are 
given every comfort, fed on delicacies, 
guarded against every possible discom- 
fort, waited upon with the greatest ser- 
vility by an army of stewards ; and above 
all able to keep clean and breathe pure 
air ; yet the average steerage passenger, 
who has paid his fare and should be en- 
titled to the same consideration as the 
saloon passenger, seldom complains. 
All hours of the day and night you can 
see them singing and dancing; for are 



An Englishman 1 1 

they not going to the Land of Hope? 
Men and women from every land enter 
into a fellowship they have never before 
known, introductions are not thought of 
amongst emigrants; some are fleeing 
from the law; some suffering unjustly; 
others with a desire to forget their mis- 
fortunes and start life again, all with a 
faith in the future for themselves in the 
New World; without that faith they 
would not have started. 

Listening to the stories of the men 
and women in the steerage interested 
me far more than the concerts in the 
saloon or the small talk of the smoking 
room. One brown-eyed Eussian Jewess, 
a girl whose father had been a rich mer- 
chant in St. Petersburg, confided in me 
she was an anarchist; she told me how 
during a riot her mother was beaten to 
death, her child torn from her breast 



12 Impressions of 

and hoisted on the point of a bayonet by 
Eussian soldiers, while a Eussian officer 
over whom she threw a pail of boiling 
water to protect herself from his brutal 
treatment, had her stripped to the waist, 
flogged until senseless and bleeding, at 
the door of her own house. She was 
carried to the hospital to recover. As 
she told me the terrible story her fellow 
countrymen and her grief stricken 
father sat around with blazing eyes and 
clenched hands, and to prove the truth 
of her story she pulled off her bodice 
showing the marks of the cruel lash on 
the soft white skin of her neck and shoul- 
ders, deep welts that would be there for 
life, now purple and black and green, 
and the father rose and uttered a curse, 
long and terrible, against Eussia. 

Many were the tales I heard from 
Eussian Jews fleeing from the terror of 
Eussia 's cruel laws, appalling stories of 



An Englishman 13 

murder and plunder, of furious hatred 
and lawless tyranny. Who can blame 
them if they sometimes strike back? 

There is a light on our starboard bow, 
every one rushes on deck, and we get our 
first glimpse of America. 

My imagination is incapable of con- 
ceiving anything of the kind more beau- 
tiful than New York Harbour; various 
and beautiful are the objects which meet 
the eye on every side. We seemed to 
enter the harbour of New York, upon 
waves of gold owing to the reflection of 
the sun just going down. 

New York is indeed a lovely and noble 
city, its advantages of position are un- 
equalled anywhere, London or Paris not 
excepted. 

The southern point of Manhattan 
Island divides the waters of the harbour 
into the North and East rivers; on this 
point stands the City of New York ex- 



14 Impressions of 

tending from river to river, and run- 
ning northward to the extent of ^ve 
miles, it covers almost as much ground 
as Paris, the extreme point is fortified 
towards the sea by a valley and forms 
an admirable point of defense; but in 
these days of peace it is converted into 
a public promenade. 

The American is perpetually repeat- 
ing that the foundation stone of their 
liberty, is fixed on the doctrine ^Hhat 
every man is free" and the first object 
seen on arriving in New York Harbour 
is the Statue of Liberty. 

How many find that Liberty there is, 
both liberty and license for the moneyed 
grafters of the great cities of America, 
but for the Emigrant who has come to 
live by the sweat of his brow, who has 
not the rights of American citizenship, 
few countries have more restrictions ; so- 
called equality is a farce ; mankind never 



An Englishman 15 

can be equal, never has been, and never 
will be. 

Wben the American, — the Pole, the 
German, the Italian, the Servian, the 
Irish and the Jew who become American 
citizens and call themselves American, 
realize this, ** God's own country,'' as 
they call it, will be a little nearer the 
mark. 



CHAPTER II 

NEW YOEK 

I ASKED my American acquaintance 
on landing if he could recommend 
a nice quiet liotel. He said the Astor 
was the only place he could think of, at 
44th Street and Broadway; so, having 
got my haggage passed by the Custom 
House officers, I hired a cab and drove 
there. It seemed rather a long way, I 
thought, he will want more than twenty- 
five cents. As my cab stopped at the 
entrance, I thought, so this is a specimen 
of a quiet hotel, is itf I had four bags 
and a coat. It took five porters to get 
me inside, one for each bag and one for 
the coat ; giving my driver fifty cents, I 
walked up the steps, but the cabman was 
16 



Impressions 17 

behind. What's that he said — a drink 
— the fare is five dollars. I was speech- 
less, so paid, but made a vow never to 
take a cab again, which I have kept. 

New York is without doubt the city of 
hotels, numerous families live in them 
all the year around, but with a few ex- 
ceptions, the hotels of New York are 
anything but desirable residences; not- 
withstanding their external show and 
garish magnificence, they are far more 
commodious than comfortable. For the 
most part they are huge erections, noise 
and tumult reign supreme, servants and 
porters rush about with a vehemence no- 
where else to be encountered. For the 
gentler sex there is a separate entrance, 
special drawing rooms are likewise ap- 
propriated to their use. Into these 
sacred retreats men cannot with pro- 
priety intrude. Owing to the size of 
these hotels, numerous elevators or lifts 



1 8 Impressions of 

are in constant requisition. These are 
cozy cages, beautifully furnished with 
cushioned seats and carpets, holding as 
many as ten persons. Each hotel pos- 
sesses a bar room and a barber's shop, 
which to men are the most important 
rooms in an hotel. Some of the hotels 
employ negro waiters, and although they 
are awkward, stupid, noisy and slow, I 
confess they are more bearable than 
their white brothers. The former at all 
events are docile and attentive and do 
their best to give satisfaction, the latter 
are uncouth, negligent and disrespectful. 
To procure anything approaching rea- 
sonable service from either black or 
white, it becomes indispensable to dis- 
tribute tips, everyone looks for a gra- 
tuity, as often as any required office is 
performed. 

The system of checks in America is 
wonderful and extraordinary and when 



An Englishman 19 

an American speaks of death, as handing 
in his checks, one understands. 

When you are traveling anywhere you 
give your bag to the hotel porter and he 
gives you a check; at the station you 
reclaim it with a check, and pass it on 
to a counter and receive another check. 
As you approach your destination a por- 
ter comes along, takes your check and 
gives you another, and so it goes until 
you reach your destination. The advan- 
tage of the check is, your bag never gets 
lost, it always turns up, but not always 
in the same shape in which it started. 

I understand why Americans travel 
with ironclad trunks, it is madness to do 
anything else. Like an idiot I started 
out with a new leather trunk. They 
punched it and kicked it, covered it with 
labels and danced on it, they scratched it 
and wrote on it and when I arrived at 
the station, I found it tied up with wire. 



2 Impressions of 

and sealed with lead seals. Anything to 
declare f said an inspector. It took me 
some minutes to recognize my trunk and 
when I did they gave me a check. The 
system of checks is not confined only 
to luggage. The conductor of the train 
passes ceaselessly to and fro asking for 
your ticket, and giving you a check in 
return or asking for your check and re- 
turning your ticket. At the hotel you 
hand your coat to a boy who darts off, 
hides it and returns with a check ; you go 
to get a drink, they give you a check 
and you pay at a desk. At a Turkish 
bath you wear a check tied around your 
neck. 

Oh, those checks ! 

The representative American has a 
sharp appetite, he gloats over the bill of 
fare, he eats with avidity, eating several 
dishes at a time. There is no exaggera- 
tion in saying the American bolts his 



An Englishman 2 1 

food, and within a space of ten minutes 
will consume a couple of steaks, boiled 
eggs, fried bacon, hot rolls, oysters, hot 
buckwheat cakes saturated with black 
syrup, all being washed down with 
glasses of ice water. People are in too 
great a haste to afford time for squeam- 
ishness, or such a trifling matter as din- 
ing room etiquette. On this score, how- 
ever, there is much to be overlooked. 
The majority of New York hotels are 
unlike those of any European city, they 
are open to all comers ; one man is quite 
as good as another. 

Those who cannot afford hotels live 
in boarding houses. These places vary, 
some are extremely expensive, others are 
very moderate in their charges. Ex- 
cept in first class establishments, where 
exclusiveness is rigidly practised, they 
are open to all sorts and conditions of 
persons. It is a mighty boon to be a 



2 2 Impressions of 

favourite with the landlord or landlady, 
as the case may be; there is less danger 
of suffering from indigestion or semi- 
starvation. For such the choicest mor- 
sels, the best ** helps," and the most 
dainty and delicate viands are reserved. 

Boarding houses sometimes do the 
work of the matrimonial agent. Young 
people of both sexes become acquainted 
after a promiscuous fashion; but I fear 
those indirectly induced to marry 
through the instrumentality of boarding 
houses, very often end in disastrous re- 
sults. 

Those families who do not live in 
hotels or boarding houses, but reside in 
apartments, have no facilities as a rule 
for preparing meals and go to the near- 
est restaurant. You will see people 
flocking out of their homes twice or 
thrice a day in all weathers to save the 
trouble of cooking; in this way persons 



An Englishman 23 

very dissimilar in their tastes, habits and 
pursuits come into contact. Should some 
individual manifest a reserved, taci- 
turn disposition, albeit such a peculiar- 
ity be natural to them, they are readily 
spotted and regarded as folk who give 
themselves airs, which in America is a 
grievous violation of constitutional 
principles, and entail upon themselves 
marked contempt. The British traveler 
may well be excused if he appears more 
fastidious in his tastes than others. At 
home, he is accustomed to animal food of 
the best quality, in the United States, 
animal food especially, is greatly in- 
ferior to the beef and mutton of this 
country. This is mainly attributable to 
the climate, which necessitates the hous- 
ing of cattle during the severe winter 
months. 

The service of the American meal is 
plainly a development of the quick 



24 Impressions of 

lunch. The quick lunch was tried in 
England but proved a failure; its object 
seems to be to stuff the maximum of 
food into the human stomach in the min- 
imum space of time; with this object in 
view the various dishes are generally 
served together. 

Ice water is the first refreshment 
served at every meal. It is indispen- 
sable to the American, they drink so 
much of it that I believe it kills more 
people than alcohol. I remember hear- 
ing of a temperance preacher visiting 
a public saloon one very wet day. A 
big Irishman who was drinking whis- 
key, one after the other to keep out 
the cold, suddenly turned to the advo- 
cate for temperance and said, ^'Say, 
mister, don't talk any more of drinking 
water, look how it rots your boots, what 
must it do to your inside f But to re- 
turn to food, Americans are certainly 



An Englishman 25 

great eaters, and the American break- 
fast is the thing; the life giving air of 
America seems to make one always 
hungry and you start breakfast with 
fruit, wonderful and beautiful fruit, too. 
Great pears and peaches, grape fruit and 
melons, then oatmeal and cream followed 
by great chops or steaks and vegetables, 
then fruit pies, the inevitable ice cream, 
with many glasses of ice water in be- 
tween. 

Of fish, the clam appears to take first 
place, but I cannot say I appreciated 
them. Of other fish there are legions, 
blue fish, red fish, and white fish, but 
they all seem to taste the same ; it takes 
a long time to get used to American 
cooking, but when you do you enjoy it. 

In the great cities of the United States, 
the practice of drinking is indulged in 
at every opportunity. When people are 
brought together either by business or 



2 6 Impressions of 

idleness, the ceremony of *^ liquoring 
up'* is indispensable. One could hardly 
offend an American more than by de- 
clining an invitation to take a drink. 
Often I have, by endeavouring to avoid 
the possibility of an offence, been 
morally compelled to accept favours of 
this nature, although were I to consult 
my own wishes I would certainly have 
preferred not. The temptation to touch 
the dangerous cup is considerable. As 
a means of recreation, the bulk of the 
male population resort to hotel bars and 
similar places. Here men drink and 
chat, form social groups, and persevere 
in treating each other until they cannot 
hold any more, but the average Amer- 
ican can drink an awful lot. Among the 
many peculiarities that of drinking is 
prominently conspicuous. They seem 
to the manner born. It may be owing to 
geographical or atmospherical causes; 



An Englishman 27 

again, the discomforts of hotel life force 
strangers to the bars. These are the 
only really comfortable rooms, and are 
made tempting and inviting, not alone 
by their glare but by their exquisite ap- 
pointments. The hotel bars are most 
elaborately furnished and richly deco- 
rated, with luxurious sofas and easy 
chairs. Barmaids are unknown in 
America ; in their places you have show- 
ily-dressed bartenders, conspicuous for 
their jewelry, and in some places always 
ready to toss you for a drink with a dice 
box. Americans are not wanting in the 
power of inventions, hence the variety 
of drinks. They usually commence with 
a brandy cocktail before breakfast by 
way of an ** appetizer, " subsequently a 
** digester" will be needed, then in due 
course and at certain intervals a '* re- 
fresher,'' a ^'reposer,'' a *^ settler,'' a 
*' cooler," an **invigorator," and a 



2 8 Impressions of 

**rouser," pending the final nightcap 
for the night. 

It is not regarded in the slightest de- 
gree derogatory for any gentleman to 
take drinks in a saloon, you meet mem- 
bers of the Government, Senate, and the 
Legislature, Judges, Generals, and 
Clerg}^men. Drinking in the States can- 
not be totally repressed or even mod- 
erately restrained any more than it can 
be in any other country. Acts of Leg- 
islature are useless; when prohibitive 
laws were in force, in certain states it 
made no difference ; it is true hotel pro- 
prietors closed their ordinary bars, but 
they opened a door in a less conspicuous 
part of the building, nothing was 
changed but the law. Even on Sunday, 
to-day, in New York any saloon door 
will open any hour of the day or night 
to a knock of the knuckles. Facts show 
that the new proliibitory law on Sunday 



An Englishman 29 

has been a failure, it has rendered the 
cost of drunkenness more costly, it is 
true, and in some instances it has added 
to the difficulty of obtaining liquor, but 
it has introduced more extensively the 
drink into the family circle. People 
more than ever buy their drink in kegs 
and keep it and drink it at home, and 
while the law has made liquor more 
costly in price, it has made it more poi- 
sonous in quality. 

It is said America is the most blas- 
pheming nation on the face of the earth, 
children swear, men swear, women 
swear. — The drayman swears at his 
horse, the tinman at his solder, the 
bricklayer at his trowel, the carpenter 
at his plane, the merchant at his cus- 
tomer, the customer at the merchant, 
and the habit is on the increase, at six- 
teen boys swear with as much facility 
as the grandfather did at sixty. 



30 Impressions of 

In a city like New York, where every 
man is a politician, and flatters himself 
that he is assisting to govern the coun- 
try, political animosities must of course 
be carried to the greatest length, and 
the press is the vehicle for party vio- 
lence, and this has degenerated into a 
licentiousness, which ought not to go on. 
Many of the New York papers are well 
conducted and well written, but there are 
many that are disgraceful, not only from 
their vulgarity, but from their odious 
personalities and utter disregard to the 
truth, especially towards England; the 
bombast and ignorance is sometimes 
amusing. It may be asked, how is it 
possible that an enlightened nation can 
permit such atrocity, but it must be re- 
membered, that newspapers are sold at 
a very low price, and that the support 
of them is derived mainly from the ig- 
norant classes. People are apt to im- 



An Englishman 31 

agine tliat the newspapers echo their 
own feelings, when the fact is by taking 
in a paper, which upholds certain opin- 
ions, the readers are by constant daily 
repetition, impressed with these opin- 
ions and have become slaves to them. 

Defamation is the greatest curse of 
the United States. Let any man rise 
above his fellows by superior talent and 
he is exalted only into a pillory to be 
pelted at, false accusations, the basest 
insinuations, are circulated. His pub- 
lic and private character are equally 
aspersed, and truth is wholly disre- 
garded, even those who have helped him 
to rise, now that he has risen above 
them, are only too eager to drag him 
down. Defamation exists all over the 
world, but it is impossible to believe to 
what an extent it is carried on in 
America. 

There are always a number of desti- 



32 Impressions of 

tute emigrants to be found in and 
aronnd New York, although there are 
many societies for their relief, like the 
St. George Society for the English, the 
St. Andrew's for the Scotch, St. Pat- 
rick's for the Irish, St. Jean for the 
French, and many others. They cer- 
tainly do a great amount of good, 
but they are sadly abused by those 
who make it their profession to live 
on charity, often at the expense of 
really deserving persons. There is 
also the great Charity Organisation 
in New York, who spend millions of 
dollars in fine buildings and highly 
paid officials; the real deserving poor 
generally avoid them owing to the arbi- 
trary methods. I do not want to find 
fault with them, because they do good 
work, but there ought to be a better 
system for the relief of the poor ; a sys- 
tem which takes more money to pay 



An Englishman 33 

officials than it does to relieve the desti- 
tute, is absurd. 

New York is a combination of London, 
Berlin and Paris ; there is little about it 
thoroughly American, it takes pride in 
being cosmopolitan. In addition to a 
very select and rigidly exclusive class of 
citizens, among whom are the old Knick- 
erbocker families, it possesses a preten- 
tious aristocracy — persons who have 
made money either by industry or spec- 
ulation, and those *^ shoddy folk'' who 
have, as people say, ^^ struck oil.'' 



CHAPTER III 

THE NEW YOKK AMERICAN 

THE original American was an Eng- 
lishman. The American himself 
cannot dispute that, but from the year 
1490 to the present time, America has 
been and is now the dumping grouiid 
of every nation in the world, ''includ- 
ing the Jew, who has no nation,'* the 
result is the American of to-day. 

The New York American is a self- 
styled democratic, he scoffs at England, 
and every other European country, yet 
at heart he is the greatest of aristocrats, 
and the so-called Four Hundred are the 
greatest snobs in the world, but they 
don't know it. The American affects 

34 



Impressions 35 



to scorn caste and sect, yet no nation 
has more of them. The real Americans 
are chivalrous and brave, their wives are 
charming and beautiful; unfortunately 
the Americans who belong to this set are 
few, and the stranger who visits Amer- 
ica seldom comes in contact with them. 
Many millionaires living in England 
to-day and who move in the inner circle 
of society are not recognized in the best 
society in the cities of the United 
States; they go there for the position 
they cannot secure in the States. 
Wealth does not give social position in 
America any more than it does in Eng- 
land, but it can and does cover a multi- 
tude of sins ; and as many unprincipled 
European noblemen go to America and 
get into society, so do American million- 
aires who have made their millions by 
graft and other dishonourable means go 



36 Impressions of 

to Europe, and for the sake of their dol- 
lars are received by certain sections 
with open arms. 

But the great Middle Class of the 
American people are the truest Ameri- 
can, and it is this class I am writing 
about, in spite of their bluff that they 
consider all men equal. 

Of course the United States forms a 
continent of almost distinct nations and 
I must now distinctly be understood to 
write only of that portion of them which 
I have seen. In conversing with Amer- 
icans I have generally found that if I 
alluded to anything which they thought 
I considered uncouth, they would assure 
me it was local and not national. 

Some of the ladies and gentlemen that 
I came in contact with, neither from 
their language, manners or appearance 
would have received that designation in 
Europe, but their claim to it rests on 



An Englishman 37 

more substantial grounds, namely dol- 
lars. 

Americans brag of tlie equality of men 
and women, any man's son may become 
the equal of any other man's son, and 
the consciousness of this is certainly a 
spur to exertion ; on the other hand it is 
also the cause of that coarse familiarity 
untempered by any shadow of respect, 
which is assumed by the grossest and 
the lowest in their intercourse with the 
highest and most refined, and as a result 
the gulf between the refined American 
and the ordinary worker is far greater 
than in any other country in the 
world. 

I have received much personal kind- 
ness from Americans, but this does not 
alter the unconquerable dislike which 
evidently lives at the bottom of every 
truly American heart against the Eng- 
lish. It shows itself in a thousand dif- 



38 Impressions of 

ferent ways, even in the midst of the 
most kindly and friendly intercourse. 

Their unequaled freedom I think I un- 
derstand better, their code of common 
laws is built upon ours, but the differ- 
ence is this: in England the laws are 
acted upon, in America they are not. I 
do not speak so much of New York, but 
out of range of their influence, the con- 
tempt of law, is greater than I can ven- 
ture to state, trespass, assault, robbery, 
even murder are often committed with- 
out the slightest attempt at legal inter- 
ference. 

The difficulties of the newly arrived 
emigrant, especially if he happens to be 
what the Americans call a ^^dude,'' are 
the same to-day as they were fifty years 
ago, as will be seen by the following in- 
teresting story, which is authentic. 

During the French Eevolution, a 
young nobleman escaped from the scene 



An Englishman 39 

of horror, and althougli lie saved his 
head from the guillotine, he saved noth- 
ing else. He arrived in New York 
nearly destitute, and after passing his 
life not only in splendour, but in the 
splendour of the Court of France, he 
found himself jostled by the busy popu- 
lation of New York without a dollar. 
The young nobleman tried to labour, but 
of what use were his shattered nerves 
and trembling white hands, against the 
sturdy strength of so many in the hus- 
tling city, so he determined to seek a 
refuge in the forest. With the little 
money he had he purchased an axe and 
reached Oneida territory. He felled a 
few of the slenderest trees and made 
himself a shelter that Eobinson Crusoe 
would have scorned, it did not even keep 
out the rain ; want of food and exposure 
to the weather produced the natural re- 
sult and the unfortunate marquis fell 



40 Impressions of 

sick and stretched upon the reeking 
earth, stifled by the withering boughs 
which hung over him, he lay parched 
with thirst and shivering in ague with 
the one last earthly hope that each heavy 
moment would prove his last. 

Near to the spot which he had chosen 
for his miserable rest, but concealed 
from it by the thick forest, was the last 
straggling wigwam of an Indian village. 
It is not known how many days the un- 
happy man had lain without food, but he 
was quite insensible when a young 
squaw, whom chance had brought from ^ 
this wigwam to his hut, entered and 
found him alive, but insensible. 

The heart of a woman is pretty much 
the same everywhere; the young girl 
paused not to think whether he was 
white or red, but her fleet feet rested 
not until she had brought milk, rum and 
blankets, and when the sufferer recov- 



An Englishman 41 

ered his senses, his head was supported 
on her lap, while with the tender gentle- 
ness of a mother she found means to 
make him swallow the restoratives she 
had brought. 

No black eyes in the world can speak 
more plainly of kindness than the lovely 
eyes of an Indian maiden and it is a 
language that all nations can under- 
stand, and the poor French nobleman 
read most clearly, in the anxious glance 
of his gentle nurse, that he should not 
die forsaken. 

So far the story is romantic enough 
and what follows is hardly less so. The 
Indian girl found means to introduce her 
white friend to her tribe ; he was adopted 
as their brother, speedily acquired their 
language and assumed their dress and 
manner of life. His gratitude to his 
preserver soon ripened into love, and the 
French nobleman and the American sav- 



42 Impressions of 

age were more than passing happy as 
man and wife. 

After the revolution in France was 
over, his broad lands were restored, but 
he continued to live in a beautiful house 
which he built on the spot where he was 
rescued, with all the comforts of civ- 
ilized life around them. They had a 
large family; some settled in France, 
while others remained in America, one 
descendant is to-day a lawyer in New 
York City. 

One of the greatest problems to me is, 
How does it come to pass that American 
men, so strong-willed and dominating, 
allow their wives and daughters to shake 
off all masculine authority more com- 
pletely than in any other part of the 
world. 

The American girl seems to exist by 
herself; sentiment and love as under- 



An Englishman 45 

lady lawyers, and just as many girl 
clerks as men, with the difference that 
they are paid better wages. 

A singular sort of chivalry is thus de- 
veloped, and you never hear the allu- 
sion to women amongst men in clubs and 
hotels, in New York, as you do in Euro- 
pean cities. 

America is called the Land of the 
Free. If Freedom is gross imperti- 
nence of the ignorant and low classes, 
the insolence and assumption of serv- 
ants, then America is certainly free. 
The freedom of the country which is 
nothing less, as I have said before, but 
atrocious license, is shown by their news- 
papers. Men and women are ruined by 
them. 

Education is a part of the policy of 
the country to make all men equal, every 
possible facility is afforded the poorest 
family to educate their children. Public 



46 Impressions of 

schools are everywhere and of every de- 
scription, schools to train boys to any 
trade, schools to train clerks, sailors, en- 
gineers and soldiers. Then the splendid 
universities; there are schools of art, 
law, medicine, sculpture, summer 
schools, winter schools, yet the Amer- 
ican child is not taught one thing, that 
is, politeness, culture, and refinement are 
left out. 

This free and over education of the 
poor is hardly a kindness; it places the 
children of the poor above their parents, 
and, as in England, the eifect of educa- 
tion on the happy country boy is to make 
him despise his work, and go to the city 
and become a clerk, to the ruin of the 
other clerks; the girl is ashamed to go 
into service as she used to, and goes into 
business, or into a factory, the women 
vie with the men and as a result, men 
are paid less salaries than hitherto, be- 



/^' 



An Englishman 47 

sides crowding them out of the fields of 
labour. 

In power, strength, and progress the 
American nation stands first in the 
world, but there seems to be a lack of 
broad education except among the Jews. 
The great mass of the people are super- 
ficial and will never admit there is any- 
thing they don't know, they simply put 
up a ''bluff,'* as they call it, and pretend 
to know more than they do. 

Passing through the business streets 
of New York City, one is surprised at 
the overwhelming number of Jewish 
names over the stores. ''It's the same 
old story," I remarked to my friend, 
"the Jews are on top over here.'' Of 
course it would be ludicrous to hear 
criticisms upon such a course from the 
American business world; it would be a 
case of "people in glass houses throw- 
ing stones." 



48 Impressions of 

The Israelite business man sometimes 
trades in old clothes and sometimes is 
Finance Minister of a Kingdom. His 
Yankee counterpart sometimes sells pop- 
corn and peanuts on a railroad train, or 
owns the whole railroad. 

It is extraordinary whenever the name 
of Jew is mentioned one always hears, 
Oh — I cannot stand Jews — a friend of 
theirs was ^^done'' by one, or they them- 
selves were ^ ^ done. ' ' The Jew certainly 
seems to be the embodiment of covetous- 
ness, and avarice never seems to wear 
such a hideous aspect as it does in 
the soul of the Jew, and especially the 
New York Jew. 

The gulf is so wide which severs the 
Jew from the rest of the world, yet to- 
day the highest positions in every Euro- 
pean country are held by Jews. One hates 
them, yet admires them ; their arrogance 
is loathsome; it seems part of their 



An Englishman 49 

religion to wear diamonds and loud 
clothes, and overfeed themselves ; yet the 
Jewish race is one of the strongest in 
the world, and I believe it is because of 
their great clannishness, their blood has 
been practically untouched by conversion 
or even marriage, they are in a sense a 
pure race in which no other race is pure. 
You or I might walk the streets of a city 
and starve, but a Jew, no, a fellow-Jew 
will always assist another, it is their 
creed ; better for us if it were ours. 

The Jew in his darkest hour has had 
sufficient vigor and shrewdness to flour- 
ish, and as an example I cannot do bet- 
ter than give the origin of Lord Eoths- 
child's great wealth as told by Pro- 
fessor Hosmer. 

One hundred years ago, there lived 
at Frankfort a man named Meyer 
Anselm, whose surname was Roths- 
child; he was a money lender and 



50 Impressions of 

had raised himself by unusual dex- 
terity from a low position, and had at 
the same time won a name as an honest 
man. At length into the Ehine region in 
the year 1793, came pouring the legions 
of the red republicans from France. 
The Princes fled in terror from the inva- 
sion, and the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel 
driving up to the door of the Jew, sur- 
prised him with this address: **I know 
of old your trustiness. I confide all I 
have in the world to you. Here is my 
treasure ; here are the jewels of my fam- 
ily. Save the jewels if you can, and do 
with the money as you choose.'' The 
landgrave became a fugitive, and within 
an hour or two, the sans culottes, taking 
possession of the city, were plundering 
high and low. Neither Jew or Chris- 
tian escaped, Meyer Anselm Eothschild 
suffering with the rest. Ten years later 
with the coming of Napoleon into power, 



An Englishman 5 i 

stability was again restored. The land- 
grave returned, bnt with small hope 
of receiving a good report. To his aston- 
ishment the faithful trustee had been 
able through all the trouble of the times 
to conduct affairs prosperously; while 
his own means had been plundered he 
had saved in some hiding place in his 
cellar wall the treasure of the prince. 
The heirloom jewels were untouched; 
and with the money he had made a mil- 
lion which he restored to the wondering 
landgrave. This was the beginning of 
the marvellous career of the great house 
of Eothschild. 

Among all the people I met in New 
York, there seemed neither old nor 
young, no venerable grey heads, or 
cheerful boyish faces, but in no part of 
America do the people seem to arrive at 
the average length of life of the old 
world. The great and sudden changes 



52 Impressions of 

of temperature, while perhaps, they stim- 
ulate the energies of those who are ex- 
posed to them, wear out the stamina 
of the body and exhaust its vitality. 
The cares of manhood and the infirmi- 
ties of second childhood are equally pre- 
mature, denying the population the two 
loveliest but most dependent stages of 
existence; the idle, but fresh and gen- 
erous morning of youth, the feeble, but 
soft and soothing evening of old age. 

In this country we find even the cli- 
mate in league with the practical, in its 
influence on the powers of man — a goad 
to material prosperity. The child is 
pushed with a forcing power into the 
duties and pursuits of maturer years; 
the man when he ceases to be of active 
use is hurried out of the busy scene, his 
part played. 

Mind and body, day and night, youth 
and age, are given up to the one great 



An Englishman 53 

pursuit of gain. But this inordinate ap- 
petite for acquiring is, in their character, 
deprived of some of its most odious 
features. It is rarely accompanied by 
parsimony or want of charity. I be- 
lieve no people on earth can be more hos- 
pitable to their equals in worldly wealth, 
or more open handed to the poor. Their 
establishments for the relief of the 
distressed are almost unrivaled in lib- 
erality, and many among them are as 
lavish in their expenditure, as they are 
energetic in possessing themselves of the 
means to supply it. 

That money should be the great step- 
ping stone to the consideration of their 
fellow-men is both the cause and effect 
of this universal tendency. Of course, 
the lower in the scale of rank and edu- 
cation you descend in your studies of 
character, the more openly and odiously 
is this trait developed ; you must go very 



54 Impressions 

high indeed before you cease to trace 
its influence. If the words I have writ- 
ten should prove in the least degree 
offensive to any of those kind friends in 
America to whom I am so much in- 
debted for disinterested and most agree- 
able hospitality, I beg them not to 
attribute it to want of gratitude or 
friendly feeling towards them. 



CHAPTER IV 

PHILADELPHIA AND BOSTON 

OF all the cities in America, Phila- 
delphia next to Boston is the most 
English of them all ; there is not so much 
outward luxury but more real comfort. 
New York is a city of palaces; Boston 
of villas and parks, Washington of pub- 
lic buildings, but Philadelphia is a city 
of homes, and the only city where I felt 
at home among the women. They seem 
different to the typical New York 
woman, prettier, more friendly; the peo- 
ple themselves are not so rich or so poor 
as in other cities, but happier and more 
contented; they live more in their own 
homes, and the bond of neighbourly 
friendship exists there more than in any 

55 



56 Impressions of 

other city I visited ; again, there seemed 
to be no unemployed, there are scores 
of building associations, friendly socie- 
ties, clubs, guilds. Everyone seems to 
belong to something, and all seem to 
practice thrift. 

Some of the most important manufac- 
tories are here, many of the largest ships 
are built in Philadelphia, and thousands 
of street cars are built and sent over to 
New York. Here in 1831 was built the 
first American locomotive, since then 
they have built about sixteen thousand. 
The workshops and sheds cover nearly 
twenty acres of land. They can turn out 
three railway engines a day from the 
first drawing of the plans, only eight 
days of pattern making, moulding, cast- 
ing, forging, riveting and milling lead 
up to the moment when the electric crane 
picks up the two hundred tons of com- 
plete engine and slings it on to the rails. 



An Englishman 57 

The locomotive engine is begotten as 
a page in an order book, with every de- 
tail of construction and dimensions care- 
fully specified, so that if any part of it 
goes wrong in after life, it can be re- 
placed, infallibly by mere reference to 
a date and number; through the kind- 
ness of the manager I was shown over 
this famous factory and saw every phase 
of its incubation. Here was an engine 
waiting to go to Canada, another for 
New Zealand, another for Japan. 

Philadelphia has made itself, spread- 
ing from a commercial center. It has 
felt its way out to the fringe of manu- 
facturing towns round it, and woven 
them into a piece of itself. 

An Englishman cannot fail to be 
pleased with Boston, its vicinity, and its 
inhabitants; it is his own country over 
again, deficient indeed, in the charm of 
association, but on the other hand, free 



5 8 Impressions of 

from the blight of poverty and the sor- 
rows of ill-rewarded toil. 

At Boston an Englishman will meet 
with many people, in whose society he 
will find himself quite at home : in their 
manners, conversation, or dress there 
is but little to remind him that he has 
crossed the Atlantic, and is in a foreign 
country ; I having once almost started at 
the word * ^ foreigner ' ' being applied to 
me in a circle of people so like those of 
my own country. You find that conver- 
sation turns much upon the same sub- 
jects as in England, that all the books 
you have read are also known to them, 
that events in England are looked upon 
with almost equal interest by them. 
Boston, socially and commercially, is 
inferior only to New York among the 
cities of North America. The harbour 
is excellent. Boston was founded in 
1630, ten years after the landing of the 



An Englishman 59 

Pilgrim Fathers. For half a century 
it made little progress, but when the 
colonies became independent it rapidly 
increased like all other Atlantic cities. 

Of late years Boston has been fa- 
voured by particular commercial enact- 
ments, and has progressed more rapidly 
than ever. The city stands upon a 
peninsula in Massachusetts Bay, marked 
by three bold hills, from North to 
South, three miles long, from East to 
West, one third of that length, but of 
an indented and irregular outline. 

As the number of the inhabitants so 
rapidly increased, this piece of land be- 
came too small for their accommodation 
and they have spread themselves over 
the island, and other parts near at hand, 
keeping up still their intimate connec- 
tion with the town on the Peninsula by 
bridges and ferries. 

Everything in Boston is scrupulously 



6o Impressions of 

clean, from the roof to the road, not 
a speck or stain ; the harbour is excellent, 
easy of access to friends, difficult to 
foes; when within its shelter, there is 
ample space and safe anchorage for a 
great amount of shipping. Fort Inde- 
pendence, more formidable by nature 
than art, protects the narrow entrance 
of the channel, at a point blank range. 
The wharves are extensive and solid; 
of late great ranges of store houses 
have been built close at hand, of com- 
modious size and lasting materials. 
These districts are scenes of constant 
and active industry. On the island op- 
posite in the harbour is East Boston. 
Here the English Mail Steam-packet 
Company have their dock and stores, 
and a ferry boat crosses between this 
offshoot and the main city every five 
minutes. 

The State House of Massachusetts 



An Englishman 6i 

stands on the highest point of the pen- 
insula; from the cupola on the dome on 
the top you see the city and the sur- 
rounding country, under you like a map, 
and get the best idea of its extent and 
position; for as long as you move about 
below from street to street you are 
sadly puzzled among the numerous 
bridges and ferries. 

This dome is a copy of that of St. 
PauPs in London; of this it is necessary 
to be informed, for the likeness is not 
very striking. 

You will probably also hear that this 
view is the finest on earth; this too is 
essential that you should be made aware 
of by the authority of your guide, for 
without being told it might perhaps 
escape your observation that such was 
the case. 

Society in Boston is exclusive even to 
a greater extent than in New York, but 



62 Impressions of 

it is so by cliques, not by classes ; public 
life in America forbids the existence of 
a privileged class, and the natural long- 
ing of the human heart for some vain 
position of superiority finds vent in 
private cliques. A well known pecul- 
iarity of the Americans is their curi- 
osity; they do not hesitate to ask you 
the most impertinent questions, without 
in the least intending to give offence by 
doing so. 

They cannot bear that anything 
should be kept secret from them, re- 
serve and aristocratic exclusiveness be- 
ing in their minds, associated together; 
they have no objection to telling you all 
their affairs, and consider that you 
should do the same. The only real 
eminence among Americans is the pos- 
session of wealth; it is at the same time 
the criterion and the reward of success 
in the great struggle in which all are 



An Englishman 63 

engaged. In conversation with for- 
eigners, the Americans impose upon 
themselves the task of defending and 
apologising for every weak point of 
their people, country or climate. They 
have convinced themselves of their su- 
periority over every other nation and 
refer to their country as *^ God's own 
Country." As a nation their ideas 
may be compared to those of an individ- 
ual, who is suddenly raised to a rank 
above that in which he was bom. 

Hence it is that the manners of all 
classes are decidedly inferior to those 
of the corresponding classes wherever 
an aristocracy exists. An American 
may be well educated, have traveled 
a great deal, be of the kindest disposi- 
tion, possess imperturbable good-hu- 
mour, but he has seldom that natural 
tact, or that admirable schooling in 
society which supplies its place. 



64 Impressions of 

In England when a man rises to the 
upper ranks of the community, he usu- 
ally adapts himself by degrees, in the 
progress of his prosperity, to the habits 
and tastes of the class he aspires to 
join. 

Those who have been born in it 
furnish him with examples; when he is 
admitted into their society, his pursuits, 
interests and manners become to an ex- 
tent identified with theirs. In America 
the prosperous man finds no fixed class 
to look up to for example, no established 
standard of refinement to guide him, no 
society of men of leisure to mix with, 
none who have been able to devote their 
time to the cultivation of the grace of 
life. I know Americans as well-bred 
and graceful in their manners as men 
need be, but they are the exceptions. 

It is highly gratifying to an English- 
man to find that in Boston, where his in- 



An Englishman 65 

troductions point him out as not unde- 
serving of kindness, his country is a 
passport to the good offices of the peo- 
ple, and the higher they ascend in the 
social scale, the more strongly this is 
marked. At the same time, they are 
exceedingly keen in their observation of 
manner and conversation. I have no 
doubt they could at once detect, and 
treat accordingly, any one who might 
try to impose upon their sagacity and 
hospitality, by representing himself to 
belong to a class of society, in his own 
country, to which he had no pretensions. 

I went of course to see the Monument 
on Bunker's Hill. The column is two 
hundred and twenty feet high, and thirty 
feet at the base; the hill is merely a 
gentle inclination, but when defended 
with breastworks, it must have been a 
most formidable position. 

On the 17th of June 1775 was fought 



66 Impressions 

the battle that has made it memorable, 
and Englishmen never showed more de- 
termined courage than on that day. 
They were all Englishmen then, though 
ranged on adverse sides — for the Crown 
and Colony. When Howe was at 
length successful at such tremendous 
cost, he had good reason to say with 
the old Cavalier of the Puritan Army 

• — To give 



The rebel dogs their due 

When the roaring shot 

Poured thick and hot 
They were stalwart men and true. 



CHAPTEB V 

SAN FRANCISCO AND SALT LAKE CITY 

THE city of the Golden Gate, San 
Francisco, fifty years ago, did not 
exist — to-day it is a handsome, populous 
city in spite of fire. The first house was 
built in 1833, when the village was 
named *^Yerba Buena," meaning in 
Spanish **good herb,'' but in 1847 
Yerba Buena, was changed to San 
Francisco. To-day the commerce of 
San Francisco is immense, the chief ex- 
ports are precious metals, breadstuffs, 
wine and wool, and of import lumber, 
coal, coffee, rice, tea, sugar, and every 
article of European luxury. The manu- 
factures are important including woollen 
and silk mills, and manufactories of 
67 



68 Impressions of 

watches, carriages, boots and furniture, 
candles, acids, wire-work, iron and brass 
castings, silver ware, colossal fortunes 
and illimitable speculations. A truly 
wonderful city. 

The roadways of ** Frisco" are well 
paved with Belgian blocks and there is 
the usual system of cars intersecting 
the city in every direction. The lead- 
ing thoroughfare, and most fashionable 
promenade in the city is Montgomery 
Street. Market Street is the main busi- 
ness thoroughfare and the ** Great Di- 
vide" of San Francisco; in Market 
Street are the leading hotels and finest 
shops. In California Street are the 
principal banks and insurance offices. 
The junction of Montgomery and Cali- 
fornia Streets is the great resort of the 
Stock Gamblers. All kinds and condi- 
tions of men, in all sorts of attire ; from 
the zenith of splendour to the modes of 



An Englishman 69 

squalor may be seen there between nine 
in the morning and six in the evening 
hovering about the '* quotations" dis- 
played on the bulletin boards of the 
brokers, and gabbing about mines and 
mining shares. 

The days of the diggings are over 
now; mining is a steady, serious syste- 
matic operation, and quartz crushing 
machines, and stamp mills for the * ^ run- 
ning" of which vast capital is required 
have superseded the rough and ready 
tools of the old diggers. There is an 
immense Eoman Catholic Cathedral, 
dedicated to St. Patrick, in Mission 
Street, with a spire two hundred and 
forty feet high, and four or five more 
edifices for Catholic worship. Among 
these the most interesting to me is the 
original Mission Church of San Fran- 
cisco, a little old structure of sun dried 
bricks, and of last century architecture. 



70 Impressions of 

In aspect it is truly Mexican. Over 
against it is a long disused graveyard 
with half effaced inscriptions in Spanish 
and Latin on the tombstones. 

The Chinese quarter of San Fran- 
cisco had a curious fascination for me, 
but I was solemnly warned by American 
friends, when I announced my resolve 
to explore Chinatown, that I had better 
take a phial of aromatic vinegar or some 
disinfectant with me to counteract the 
effects of the horribly offensive odours 
with which my nose would be assailed, 
but I am afraid it was partly preju- 
dice. 

The smell of opium raw and cooked, 
and in progress of cooking, mixed with 
the smell of fish and vegetables is cer- 
tainly not pleasant, but not half so bad 
as some of the courts and alleys of 
New York, Paris or London. 

Chinatown contains a large number 



An Englishman 71 

of Chinese laundries, very well con- 
ducted and where washing is done at a 
much cheaper rate than is charged at 
the hotels. It would be difficult to say 
what industries are not carried on by 
these indefatigably patient, laborious 
and neat-handed immigrants from the 
Flowery Land. They will undertake 
the most toilsome and repulsive manual 
labour, and the nicest arts and crafts; 
they will be railway navvies, waiters, 
machanics, house servants, anything 
you please. They are content to work 
for fifty cents a day and save money. 

There are 5,000 Chinese laundry men 
in San Francisco, and in the cigar fac- 
tories there are no less than 10,000 
Chinese workmen. 

The Anti-Chinese feeling is strong in 
San Francisco. The Chinese work for 
wages that will not support the family 
of a white labourer, while the Chinese 



72 Impressions of 

themselves are more than well fed on 
a handful of rice and a little pork, cost- 
ing a few cents a day; they become af- 
fluent, according to their standard, on 
wages that would beggar an American. 
As an able American essayist, Mr. J. 
Dee, discoursing on Chinese immigra- 
tion remarks with scant philanthropy of 
poor John Chinaman: It is precisely 
his characteristics which make him 
formidable in the contest for survival 
with other races of men. His miser- 
able little figure, his pinched and 
wretched way of living, his slavish and 
untiring industry, his indifference to 
high and costly pleasures, which our 
civilization almost makes necessities, 
his capacity to live in wretched dens in 
which a white man would die, his 
frugality, abstemiousness and capacity 
for roughing it ; why it is almost a crime 
to be recorded against him, that in the 



An Englishman 73 

long warfare of his race for the means 
of existence, his physical character has 
become adapted to the very smallest 
needs of human existence, with a capac- 
ity for the severest toil; miserably 
abandoned and depraved John China- 
man, who can subsist on anything and 
almost on nothing. He is clearly out of 
place in a land like America, overflowing 
with milk and honey, and Little Neck 
Clams. 

Out of the blaze of electric lights 
and the whirr of the street cars, one 
turns down a dark street and you might 
be in China. 

The ^^ heathen Chinee" is peculiar to 
San Francisco, not but what as an in- 
dividual he is fairly common in New 
York; but it is only in San Francisco, 
which stands opposite to his own coun- 
try, that he has attained the proportions 
of a racial problem. The Chinaman has 



74 Impressions of 

Orientalized bis special district. Green 
streamers with huge golden signs in 
their own characters hang from every 
building. Chinese theatres, Chinese 
restaurants, Chinese temples, opium 
dens. Joss houses, dirt and colour, 
shrewdness and superstition, industry 
and debauchery reek in Chinatown. 

Besides being bloodthirsty, the China- 
man has a genius for fraud and treach- 
ery of every kind; he smokes opium 
fervently and no law will prevent him. 
You only want to visit an opium den 
once. Imagine a dark underground, 
foul smelling courtyard full of dirt and 
refuse, all around wooden rooms with 
verandahs, painted bright green, where 
the Chinese live sometimes twelve in one 
room, open a door, and you are in a 
Chinese Joss house. It is something be- 
tween a scullery and the forecastle of a 
dirty trampship ; two tiers of bunks run 



An Englishman 75 

around it, absolutely filthy. Most of the 
bunks are occupied by Chinamen, here 
and there a girl, even white girls. All 
the women in Chinatown are bought 
and sold; the debaucheries of the 
Chinese are unfit for publication. On 
one of the bunks lay a dirty leather- 
skinned old man smoking opium. He did 
not so much as turn his head at the 
entrance of the foreign devils; all he 
thought about was his opium. In his 
fingers he held a long pipe, before him 
was a lamp and a jar of opium. He col- 
lected a drop of this viscous syrup on 
a bodkin and kneaded it into the flame 
turning it around and round, till it 
hardened into a little ball about the 
size of a pea ; then he put it in his pipe, 
lit it at the lamp and inhaled deeply. 
Out came a cloud of blue fragrant 
smoke, another deep inhalation, another 
cloud of smoke, and the pipe was out. 



76 Impressions of 

It took at least two minutes to prepare 
and two seconds to smoke; to produce 
the desired intoxication, it takes a sea- 
soned smoker twenty pipes. 

Terror and Anarchy are the real 
Government of Chinatown. Secret so- 
cieties, known as ^^High Binders,'' 
blackmail and murder at will; every 
Chinaman has to subscribe to these 
societies; if they refuse they are found 
dead in the street. Sometimes different 
gangs carry on a war between them- 
selves and Chinatown is thick with 
smoke and bullets; for a policeman to 
attempt to interfere would be suicide. 

The Chinese are frugal, but it is a 
mistake to suppose he will not fling his 
money about on occasion. Banquets 
at many pounds a head with champagne 
and every delicacy of the season, are 
far from uncommon in Chinatown. 

Peering from latticed windows al- 



An Englishman 77 

mond-eyed women sit day and night, 
prisoners, and as you pass under soft 
paper lanterns, figures in blouses and 
loose trousers, and slippers with black 
red-tufted caps and pigtails glide by, 
then you suddenly turn round a corner 
and find yourself amongst the electric 
cars and civilization, and you wonder 
if you have been dreaming. 

*'You don't know the real nigger,'' 
said an American to me when I praised 
the coloured people I had seen. His 
voice had a gleam of passionate ani- 
mosity, one could see he had been brood- 
ing himself out of all relations to real- 
ity in this matter, he was a man beyond 
reason or pity, he was obsessed. Hatred 
of that imaginary, diabolical nigger, 
blackened his soul. Ignorant people 
can only think in types and abstractions, 
and when the commonplace American 
or the commonplace Colonial Briton 



y8 Impressions of 

sets to work to tliink over the negro 
problem he banishes most of the mate- 
rial evidence from his mind. He for- 
gets the genial carriage of the ordinary 
coloured man, his beaming face, his 
kindly eye, his rich jolly voice, his 
touching and trustful friendliness, his 
amiable unprejudiced readiness to serve 
and follow a white man. He forgets 
(perhaps he has never seen) the dear 
humanity of these people, their innocence 
and delightful love of colour, and song, 
their immense capacity for affection 
and the warm romantic touch in their 
imagination. 

He ignores the real fineness of the 
indolence, that despises servile toil, of 
the carelessness that disdains the watch- 
ful, aggressive economies, day by day, 
now a wretched little gain here and 
now a wretched little gain there, that 
makes the dirty fortune of the Eussian 



An Englishman 79 

Jews, who prey upon the rather exag- 
gerated vanity of the coloured people. 

To realize the important aspect of 
this question, one must think of the 
eight millions of black men, yet a large 
proportion of these coloured people are 
more than half white. One hears a 
good deal about the high social origins 
of the southern planters, very many de- 
rive indisputably from the first families 
of England. It is the same blood flows 
in these mixed coloured people's veins. 
Just think of the sublime absurdity, 
therefore, of the ban. There are gentle- 
men of education and refinement, quali- 
fied lawyers and doctors, whose ances- 
tors assisted in the Norman Conquest 
and they dare not enter a car marked 
*^ White'' in the south, and intrude upon 
the dignity of the rising loan-monger 
from Whitechapel. One tries to put 
that to the American in vain. 



8o Impressions of 

''These people," you say, ''are nearer 
your blood than any of these ringletted 
immigrants on the east side/' The an- 
swer is generally the same — they say 
you don't understand the question, you 
don't know the feeling. 

It is to the tainted whites, one's sym- 
pathy goes out. The black people seem 
to be fairly contented with their inferi- 
ority, you find them all over the States, 
as waiters, cab-drivers, railway porters, 
car attendants; a pleasant, smiling, ac- 
quiescent folk ; but the one with more or 
less a taint of colour thinks of the injus- 
tice he must bear with him through life, 
the perpetual slight and insult he must 
undergo, from all that is vulgar and 
brutal among the whites. 

I once went to a "Coon" music hall, 
and saw something of a lower level of 
coloured life. It was a variety enter- 
tainment, good-humoured and brisk 



An Englishman 8 i 

throughout. I watched keenly and saw 
nothing of the immoral suggestion one 
would find in a music hall either in Eng- 
land or America. The kissing and love 
making was artless and simple minded. 
It seemed to me the negro did this sort 
of thing with a better grace and a bet- 
ter temper than a white man of the 
same social level; he shows a finer self 
respect and thinks more of deportment. 

There were a number of family 
groups, the girls brightly dressed, but 
no worse than the coster or Jews in a 
London gallery; and there was no 
orange eating or interrupting hooligans 
at all. Nobody seemed cross, everybody 
was sober, one could not help taking a 
liking to these gentle human dark 
skinned people. 

Whatever America has to show in 
progress to-day, I doubt if she can show 
anything finer than the progress the 



82 Impressions of 

coloured men are making to-day; hun- 
dreds of them living blamelessly, hon- 
ourably, and patiently, getting for them- 
selves what scraps of refinement and 
learning they can, keeping their hold 
on a civilization they are grudged and 
denied. They know they have a handi- 
cap, that they are not exceptionally bril- 
liant nor clever people (there are excep- 
tions), every black man is aware of his 
representative and vicarious character; 
fighting against foul imaginations, mis- 
representations, injustice, insult and 
the unspeakable meanness of base an- 
tagonists. 

The patience of the negro is remark- 
able. He may not even look contempt, 
but must admit superiority in those 
whose daily conduct to him is the clearest 
evidence of moral inferiority. He must 
go to and fro self-controlled, bereft of 



An Englishman 83 

all the equalities that the great flag of 
America proclaims, that flag for whose 
United Empire his people fought and 
died, giving place and precedence to the 
strangers who pour in to share its 
beneficence; that he must do, and wait. 
The indefatigable Jews, the Irish, the 
Poles may cherish grievances and rail 
aloud, he must keep still. They may be 
revengeful, threatening and perverse, 
their wrongs excuse them. For him 
there is no excuse, and of all the races 
on earth, which has suffered such wrongs 
as this negro blood that is still imputed 
to him as a sin? 

Of late years, many instances of 
lynching have appeared in the news- 
papers; and, it seems, the real cause 
is the inefficiency of the law in dealing 
with law breakers, especially when life 
is at stake ; a negro or a white man may 



84 Impressions of 

commit the most atrocious of crimes and 
even though caught red handed, it may 
take a year or two before he gets his 
deserts ; until slavery was abolished the 
ravishing of white women was rare, but 
afterwards the negro was taught to as- 
sert his equality and so the ravishing 
and murder of white women and girls 
commenced and the outraged whites, 
impatient at the long delay of the law, 
have seemed to have found some justi- 
fication for lynching. It is generally 
conceded that the '^aw's delay," is 
partly responsible for the wild justice 
of mob vengeance. 

Lying at the foot of the Wasatch 
Mountains spreads the great plain, far 
away into the unseen vistas of the 
North, the whole expanse of valley filled 
with a golden haze of surprising rich- 
ness, the effect of a tropical sunshine, 
streaming over fields sown thick with 



An Englishman 85 

sunflowers like an English field with but- 
tercups; this is the home of the Mor- 
mons. 

Salt Lake City. Brigham Young said 
when coming over the mountains in 
search of a new home for his people, he 
saw, in a vision, an angel standing on 
a conical hill, pointing to a spot of 
ground on which the new Temple must 
be built. Coming down into this basin 
of Salt Lake, he first sought for the 
Cone, which he had seen in his dream; 
he found it, by a stream of fresh hill 
water flowing at its base, which he called 
the City Creek. This is the heart of the 
city, the Mormon holy place, of this 
Jerusalem of the West. 

The city covers about three thousand 
acres of land between the mountains 
and the river. To-day, banks, stores, 
offices, hotels, all the conveniences of 
modern life are there. 



86 Impressions of 

In its busy central position nothing 
hints the difference between Main Street 
in Salt Lake City and the chief streets 
of Kansas City or Denver, except the ab- 
sence of grog shops and larger beer sa- 
loons. The hotels have no bars, the 
streets have no betting houses, no gam- 
ing tables. Eight and left from Main 
Street, crossing it, parallel to it, lie hun- 
dreds of blocks, in each block, stands a 
cottage, in the midst of fruit trees, some 
of these houses are of goodly appear- 
ance and would let for high rentals in 
the Isle of Wight, others are small, con- 
taining four or five rooms — these are the 
houses of the wives of the Mormons. 

In first South Street is the Theatre 
and the city hall, both beautiful build- 
ings. The City Hall is used as head- 
quarters of Police and Court of Justice. 

The Mormon police are swift and 
silent, nothing escapes their notice. 



An Englishman 87 

During the winter the miners come in 
to Salt Lake City from Denver. These 
are the people the police have to re- 
press : every man with a revolver in his 
belt clamouring for beer or whiskey, for 
gambling tables and lewd women, com- 
forts which are strictly denied to any 
one in Salt Lake City. No beggar is 
ever seen, scarcely ever a tipsy man — ' 
poverty is unknown. 

Seventy years ago there were six 
Mormons in America, to-day there are 
two hundred thousand. This power of 
growth — a power developed in the 
midst of a persecution — is one of the 
strangest facts in the story of this 
strange people; they have risen from 
nothing into a vast and vital church. 

The spirit of the Mormon church may 
best be read in the missionary labourers 
of these people. It is their boast, that, 
when they go out to convert the gentiles, 



88 Impressions of 

they carry with them no purse, but go 
forth alone, taking no thought of what 
they shall eat, or where they shall lie 
down. The way in which a member may 
be called has an air of primitive ro- 
mance. One of the Elders, for instance, 
is walking through a street; he sees a 
young fellow driving a team, a thought 
comes into his prophetic mind, and, call- 
ing the young man to his side, he tells 
him the Lord has chosen him to go 
forth and preach Mormonism, mention- 
ing perhaps, the period and the place. 
It may be for one year, it may be for 
ten, the locality may be Liverpool, Da- 
mascus or Pekin; asking only a few 
hours to put his house in order, to take 
leave of his friends, to kiss his wives 
and children, he will start on his errand 
of grace. 

Without money and without food he 
starts on his journey, hiring himself as 



An Englishman 89 

a driver, a guard or a carpenter to 
some train of merchandise going to the 
river or the sea. If his sphere is in 
Europe, he will work his way to New 
York then perhaps work his way on a 
cattle boat, preaching all the way the 
glad tidings of a Mormon's rest in the 
beautiful valley of the Mountains. One 
man told me he travelled from Salt 
Lake City to San Francisco, from San 
Francisco to Ceylon, from Ceylon to 
Poonah, toiling, preaching, begging, 
labouring; among Calif ornian miners, 
Chinese sailors, Cingalese farmers, 
Bombay teamsters and muleteers, sel- 
dom wanting for a shelter, never want- 
ing for a meal, such is the spirit of the 
Mormons. Living on crusts of bread, 
sleeping beneath lowly roofs, he toils 
and preaches from city to city, ardent 
in the doing of his daily task; patient, 
abstinent, obscure, courting no notice, 



go Impressions of 

rousing no debates, living the poor 
man's life, offering himself everywhere 
as the poor man's friend. "When his 
task is done, he will preach his way back 
from the scene of his labour to his 
pleasant home, to his thriving farm, his 
wives and children in the valley of Salt 
Lake City. 

In this Mormon city, every man is 
a preacher; all over the world, they 
pronounce against the world and the 
world's ways. They promise the poor 
man merrier times and a brighter home ; 
they offer the starving bread, the 
houseless roofs, and the ragged clothes. 
The Christian Church professes to hold 
these gospels, but do not act them; the 
Mormon preacher does. Show a Mor- 
mon a beggar, or an outcast, he con- 
siders himself chosen by God to save 
him; with men who dwell in great 
houses, who dine off silver plate, he has 



An Englishman 91 

no concern. The rich and the learned 
have their own creeds, they have no need 
of him, and he would not seek them in 
their pride. 

In Salt Lake City about five hundred 
bishops and elders live in polygamy, 
having on an average four wives each. 
The great body of Mormons have only 
one wife and these are quite the hap- 
piest of the Mormons; the practice of 
marrying a plurality of wives is not 
popular, but many sacrifices are made 
for their reKgion. The women as a 
rule are plainly, almost poorly dressed, 
they are very quiet and subdued in man- 
ner and have an almost unnatural calm, 
as if all dash, all sportiveness, and all 
life had been preached out of them ; they 
seldom smile except with a wan and 
wearied look; seclusion seems to be a 
fashion wherever polygamy is law, the 
habit of secluding women from society 



92 Impressions of 

tends to dim their sight, and dull their 
hearing; these Mormon women know 
very little, and take little interest in 
things and are shy and reserved. It is 
an open question in Salt Lake City, 
whether it is better for a plural house- 
hold to be gathered under one roof or 
not; but every man is free to arrange 
his own household as he likes, so long 
as he avoids contention and promotes 
the public peace. 

It must not be said that these Mormon 
ladies have been made worse in their 
moralities by their mode of life; Mor- 
mons declare that in their city, women 
have become more domestic, wifely and 
motherly than they are among gentiles ; 
and that what they have lost in bril- 
liancy in accomplishment, they have 
gained in virtue and in service. 

The Mormon creed appears to be that 
woman is not worth damnation. 



An Englishman 93 

Women, wrote Brigham Young once, 
will be more easily saved than men, 
tHey have not sense enough to go far 
wrong, men have more knowledge, and 
more power; therefore they can go 
more quickly and more certainly to 
Hell. 



PAET II 
CANADA 



PREFACE 

Shall I go to Canada! is a question 
asked by thousands of men every day. 
Some apply to the various Emigration 
offices, others ask men who have failed 
and returned; both sources are not 
sufficiently reliable for a man to leave 
his country, his home and his friends. 

The Emigration officials tell you of 
the bright side of the Country, they 
show you beautiful pictures of wheat- 
fields and charming homesteads, the 
farmer in his shirtsleeves at the plough, 
the wife plucking delicious fruit in the 
orchard, happy, laughing children play- 
ing in the hay. They tell you of the 
glorious summer, and the 160 acres 
97 



9 8 Preface 

which is given for the asking, and so 
on. 

The returned emigrant who has failed 
will tell you of the terrible winter, the 
high price of food and clothing, of his 
hopeless search for work in the towns, 
the isolation and toil of farming, the 
suffering and privation of his family, 
and the prejudice so openly shown to 
British Emigrants by Canadians. 

I have endeavoured in this book, to 
show Canada as it is, and although 
one is not going to the Paradise sug- 
gested by those interested in Canada, 
you are not going to the inhospitable 
wilderness of ice and snow the returned 
emigrant would make you believe. 

William Woodley. 



Preface 99 

THE LAW OF THE YUKON. 

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes 

it plain: 
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your 

strong and your sane. 
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I 

harry them sore; 
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are 

grit to the core; 
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the 

bear in defeat, 
Sired of a bull dog parent, steeled in the furnace 

heat. 
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your 

chosen ones; 
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call 

my sons; 
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I 

glut with my meat; 
But the others — the misfits, the failures, — I tram- 
ple under my feet. 
Dissolute, damned and despairing, crippled and 

palsied and slain. 
Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters — go 

take back your spawn again. 

R. W. Service. 



CHAPTER I 

THE STOKY OF QUEBEC 

aUEBEC is without doubt the most 
interesting and historical city in 
Canada. The river St. Charles wind- 
ing through low rich grounds empties 
itself into a wide basin, closed in to the 
northeast by the Island of Orleans. 
In the angle it makes with the St. Law- 
rence is a lofty promontory; there 
stands the city, walled and bastioned 
round. On an undulating slope, rising 
gradually from the margin of the 
smaller stream to the foot of the battle- 
ments, lie the suburbs of St. Roch and 
St. Valier. On the highest point of 
the promontory, and the most advanced 
into the river is Cape Diamond, the 

101 



I02 Impressions of 

strongest citadel in the New World. 

On tlie river side, a hundred yards 
of perpendicular rock forbid the foot of 
man; another is fenced off from the 
town by a massive fortification and 
broad glacis; the third side of the grim 
triangle looks out upon the plains of 
Abraham, in a line of armed ramparts. 

The lower town is built upon a nar- 
row strip of land saved from the water, 
under the lofty cliffs of the promontory, 
stretching from the suburb of St. Eoch 
to where the citadel overhangs. Busy 
wharves, with numerous ships alongside, 
extend all round the town and for three 
miles up the St. Lawrence. 

From Quebec to the opposite shore is 
but three quarters of a mile, but the 
basin just below is ^ve times as wide, 
and large and deep enough to hold the 
English Navy. Through the strait the 
tides flow with great rapidity, rising 



An Englishman 103 

and falling twenty feet, as the flood or 
ebb of the sea dams up or draws away 
the water of the stream. There are 
many dangerous currents; very few 
ever rise again who sink for a moment 
in their treacherous embrace; even 
strong swimmers have gone down like 
lead. 

The story of how and by whom this 
fair city came to be built and why the 
flag of dear old England floats upon its 
citadel, will bear repeating. 

The first European who ever visited 
these lands was Jacques Cartier. In 
May 1535 he sailed from St. Malo with 
three small ships, he and his followers 
were blessed by the Bishop, in the 
Cathedral received the holy sacrament, 
and bade farewell to their friends as if 
forever. The little squadron was for 
a long time dispersed, but met again on 
the 26th July. Having visited New- 



I04 Impressions of 

f oundland tliey kept it to the north, and 
sailed into a large gulf full of islands. 
They passed on the north side of 
Anticosti, and sometimes landing by 
the way, came at length to the mouth 
of the Saguenay. By means of two 
Indians taken in the former voyage, at 
the Bay of Chaleau, they conversed with 
the inhabitants, and overcame their 
terror. 

These simple people then received 
them with songs of joy, giving them 
freely all the provisions they had. 
Their king wore a crown which he trans- 
ferred to Jacques Cartier. The follow- 
ing year the adventurers returned to 
France. Four years afterwards Sieur 
de Eoberval aided by Jacques Cartier 
landed at the mouth of the St. Charles 
Eiver; but the inhabitants met them 
this time with war instead of peace. 

Seven miles from Quebec is Cap 



% 



An Englishman 105 

Eouge; there the French built their 
first stronghold to guard themselves 
from, I may say, just vengeance. They 
named it Charlesbourg Eoyal, but their 
leader soon led them back to France 
owing to the dissension of his followers. 
At the end of the sixteenth century 
when the gloom of this failure had 
passed away, Charwin and Pont grave 
opened a fur trade at Tadousac, with- 
out much success. Next followed the 
Calvinist De Morts, with a little fleet of 
four sail. His enormous privileges 
and the religious dissensions of his fol- 
lowers caused his ruin. His successor, 
the worthy Champlain, founded the 
city of Quebec in 1608, and cultivated 
the rich valley of the St. Charles; with 
some of his followers he penetrated to 
the great lakes of the west, and re- 
turned in safety from among their 
fierce and savage nations. To this vast 



io6 Impressions of 

territory of Canada lie gave the name 
of New France. For many years the 
settlers met with great difficulties from 
the climate and the Indians, but adven- 
turers poured in from the Old "World, 
and wars and fire-water thinned their 
foes. Some powerful tribes sought 
their alliance, serving them to the end 
with faith and courage. Montreal, 
Niagara, and other towns were founded 
and Quebec was strengthened into the 
Gibraltar of the West. 

The quarrels of the Mother Countries 
involved these colonists in constant dif- 
ficulties with their English neighbours 
of the south, and their Indian allies 
added unheard-of horrors to their wars. 

After many alternate successes, a 
British army of great force under the 
command of General Amherst invaded 
Canada in 1759. 

Ticonderoga fell into his power and 



An Englishman 107 

Niagara was won by the division of 
General Johnson after a gallant battle. 

These triumphs were of but little 
moment, for all knew that on Quebec the 
fate of Canada depended, and the fail- 
ure of General Hill half a century be- 
fore had given a lesson of the difficul- 
ties of the attack. A large fleet, how- 
ever, commanded by Admiral Saunders 
carrying an army of seven thousand 
men reached the Island of Orleans in the 
end of June. 

For a few years, and for a great pur- 
pose, England was given one of those 
men whose names light up the pages 
of history ; this was Wolfe ; he was only 
thirty-two years old and to him the 
expedition was entrusted. 

He took possession of the Island of 
Orleans and occupied Point Levy with 
a detachment; his prospects were not 
encouraging, the great stronghold 



io8 Impressions of 

frowned down on him from an almost 
inaccessible position, bristling with 
guns, defended by a superior force, a 
portion of a gallant army, and inhabited 
by a hostile population. 

Above the city, steep banks rendered 
landing almost impossible; below, the 
country for eight miles was embarrassed 
by two rivers, many redoubts and the 
watchful Indians. 

A part of the fleet lay above the town, 
the remainder in the North Channel be- 
tween the Island of Orleans and Mont- 
morenci. Each ebb tide floated down 
fire ships, but the sailors towed them 
ashore, and they proved harmless. 

The plan which first suggested itself 
was to attack by the side of Mont- 
morenci, but this the brave Montcalm 
was prepared to meet. On the 2nd of 
July a division of grenadiers landed 
below the falls; some of the boats 



An Englishman 109 

grounded on a shoal, and caused great 
confusion, so that arrangements, excel- 
lent in themselves, were in their result 
disastrous. 

The grenadiers with an indiscreet 
ardour advanced, unformed and un- 
supported, against the entrenchments. 
A steady and valiant defence drove 
them back ; a storm threatening, and the 
loss being already heavy, the General 
re-embarked the troops with quiet reg- 
ularity. 

The soldiers drooped under their re- 
verse, but there was always one cheer- 
ful face — that of their leader. Never- 
theless, inward care and labour wasted 
his weak frame: he wrote to England 
sadly and despondingly, for the future 
was very dark, but he acted on an in- 
spiration. 

His generals were brave men, and 
■ suggested very daring plans ; he seized 



1 1 o Impressions of 

the boldest counsel, risked the great 
venture, and won. 

On the night of the 12th September 
the fleet approached the shore below the 
town, as if to force a landing. The 
troops embarked at one in the morning, 
and ascended the river for three leagues, 
when they got into boats, and floated 
noiselessly down the stream, passing 
the sentries unobserved. Where they 
landed a steep, narrow path wound up 
the side of the cliff forming the river's 
bank; it was defended bravely against 
them, but in vain. When the sun rose 
the army stood upon the plains of 
Abraham. 

Montcalm found he was worsted as a 
General, but it was still left to him to 
fight as a soldier; his order of battle 
was promptly and skilfully made — the 
regular troops were his left, resting on 
the bank above the river; the gallant 



An Englishman 1 1 1 

Canadian Seigneurs with their provin- 
cials supported by two regiments formed 
his right; beyond these, menacing the 
English left, were clouds of French and 
Indian skirmishers. 

General Townshend met these with four 
regiments; the Louisbourg Grenadiers 
formed the front of battle to the right, 
resting on the cliff; and there also was 
Wolfe, exhorting them to be steady and 
to reserve their discharge. The French 
attacked, at forty paces they staggered 
under the fire, but repaid it well; at 
length they slowly gave ground. 

As they fell back the bayonet and clay- 
more of the Highlanders broke their 
ranks, and drove them with great car- 
nage into the tower. 

At the first Wolfe had been wounded 
in the wrist ; another shot struck him in 
the body, but he dissembled his suffer- 
ing, for his duty was not yet done. 



112 Impressions of 

Again a ball passed through his breast, 
and he sank : when they raised him from 
the ground he tried with his faint hand 
to clear the death mist from his eyes; 
he conld not see how the battle went, but 
the voice which fell upon his dying ear 
told him he was immortal. 

There is a small monument on the 
place of his death with the date and this 
inscription : — 

'^Here died "Wolfe victorious/* 

He was too precious to be left, even 
on the field of his glory. England, jeal- 
ous of his ashes, laid them with his 
father's near the town where he was 
born. The chivalrous Montcalm was 
also slain. In a lofty situation on Cape 
Diamond a pillar is erected, ^'To the 
memory of two illustrious men, Wolfe 
and Montcalm.'' 

Five days after the battle, Quebec sur- 



An Englishman 113 

rendered on such terms as generous vic- 
tors give to gallant foes. Throughout 
all England were illuminations and 
songs of triumph, except in one country 
village, for there Wolfe's widowed 
mother mourned her only son. 

This is the story of Quebec, and the 
reason why that flag of dear old Eng- 
land floats above its citadel. 



CHAPTER II 

MONTREAL 

IT is only about 175 miles from Que- 
bec to Montreal; you can go by 
either water or rail, Montreal being the 
head of ocean navigation. During the 
season it is most enjoyable to go by one 
of the river boats, which are something 
like the grandstand of an English race- 
course, with decks, one above the other, 
each with its saloon and state rooms, 
verandas and every comfort and lux- 
ury; the scenery going up the river is 
very fine; the other route is by the 
Grand Trunk Railway and is the one 
usually taken by emigrants. A Cana- 
dian Railway is very different from an 
English one. They are far more com- 

114 



Impressions 115 

fortable, a passage running right 
through the train, while the conductor 
walks through to and fro all day and all 
night to attend to the wants of his pas- 
sengers. The general public travel first 
class, while emigrants have special 
trains in charge of a Government 
Agent. There is a stove in every car- 
riage for cooking, making tea or coffee, 
etc; at night the seats are formed into 
beds. 

I remember in the early hour of a 
bitterly cold winter morning our train 
stopping at Eichmond owing to the 
snow; at a moment's notice we were 
bundled out, half dressed, women and 
children included. In the hurry and 
confusion clothes got mixed, boots got 
lost, and people put on each other's 
clothes, the first thing they could put 
their hands on, which were exchanged 
next day amid much amusement. We 



1 1 6 Impressions of 

approached Montreal in the early hours, 
the following morning crossing by the 
wonderful Victoria Bridge; this bridge 
was built by Messrs. Peto, Brassy and 
Betts in 1853 and cost one million four 
hundred thousand pounds; it is nearly 
two miles long, and was designed by 
Eobert Stephenson who visited Canada 
for that purpose. It has twenty-four 
arches, the piers and abutments being 
of cut limestone, the centre arch is 330 
feet, and the others 242 feet in span 
and 60 feet above watermark. The 
weight of the tube through which the 
train passes is about 8,000 tons and of 
the stone for the piers 250,000 tons — it 
is certainly one of the wonders of the 
world. 

The Canadians are a restless loco- 
motive people, they are ever on the 
move in travelling; everybody travels 
one class, the millionaire, the pick- 



An Englishman 117 

pocket, the well educated woman of the 
highest rank, the senator and the 
swindler, they all meet together in the 
same carriage and the one great feature 
is the universal deference shown to 
women, whoever they may be. Not only 
in Canada, but through all the States, a 
woman can travel alone without the 
least chance of annoyance or insult. 
Let a woman or girl be ever so indiffer- 
ently dressed it is sufficient that she is a 
woman, she has first place everywhere. 
Attention and courtesy are paid to 
strangers all through Canada even in 
spite of the prejudice that exists against 
Englishmen, and although there is no 
touching of hats or the least servility 
the public servants of all description 
have more self-reliance and dignity, 
which contrasts favourably with the 
same class of public servants in Europe. 
I am not making this remark to dispar- 



1 1 8 Impressions of 

age the one or praise the other, but 
simply contrasting the customs of the 
old and new countries. 

Montreal is the largest city in Can- 
ada, its population is principally 
French, it is the distributing point of 
Canadian trade, as it is the port where 
lake or fresh water navigation ends, and 
ocean navigation begins. There are five 
lines of steamships trading to Liver- 
pool during the open season and much 
of the commerce of the North "West 
States of the Union comes that way as 
well as all that of Ontario. Between 
Montreal and Chicago there are 1260 
miles of waterway, consisting of lakes, 
and canals carrying an immense fleet 
of ships, some of them of great tonnage, 
bringing produce and minerals from the 
Far West to be transhipped at Montreal 
into the ocean steamers for export to 
Europe. The quays and wharves are 



An Englishman 119 

very large, and along the waterside 
there are extensive warehouses for stor- 
ing goods, some of them very fine build- 
ings. 

The streets are very irregular and not 
as well laid out as they might be, on ac- 
count of the city being constructed al- 
most piecemeal, but there are many fine 
buildings and beautiful churches. Lime- 
stone is the principal building material 
— and very good it is. 

There are no workhouses at all in 
Canada and so no poor rate; if a man 
won't work he can go to jail, and it is 
not uncommon for a man to present 
himself at a police court and ask for so 
many months. The prison system is not 
so cruel as in other countries, as silence 
is not enforced ; the Governor of the city 
prison told me half the crime in Canada 
was caused through drink. There are an 
enormous number of hotels and saloons 



I20 Impressions of 

in Montreal and although the citizens 
themselves are sober the foreign pop- 
ulation spend all their spare time in the 
saloons, but I believe owing to the many 
temperance organizations it is better 
than it used to be. The Canadian saloon 
keeper is looked upon as a host and he 
will greet you with a handshake and of- 
fer you a drink. He is considered the 
level of anyone who goes in, this es- 
pecially applies to the hotels where he 
sits down to dinner or supper with his 
visitors ; it is but just to say in many in- 
stances they are very respectable 
members of society and often rich; the 
respect shown to the master of an hotel 
induces people of the highest character 
to embark in the profession. 

I have mentioned the number of 
saloons in Montreal which are so con- 
ducive to drinking. It is not confined to 
a certain class but the whole mass. I do 



An Englishman 



121 



not mean tliat everybody gets drunk, 
but to drink with a friend when you 
meet him is good fellowship, to drink 
with a stranger, politeness; they do not 
settle any business without a drink; if 
you meet you have a drink, if you part 
you have a drink, if you quarrel you 
drink, if you make it up you drink, if it's 
hot you drink, if it's cold you drink. 
They start young and only leave off 
when they die. As for water, as a 
Canadian once said to me : ' * Water is all 
right for navigation, have a drink?" 
Still I am happy to bear witness to the 
prosperity and advancement of Mont- 
real, so favourably situated both for 
inland and ocean commerce in the cen- 
tre of a fine agricultural country, the 
Grand Trunk line like a great artery 
connecting it with all parts of Canada 
and the United States ; no wonder it has 
arrived at the proud position of the 



122 Impressions of 

commercial metropolis of a young and 
rising nation. I must say of everybody 
I met in Montreal I received the great- 
est kindness and hospitality, especially 
from Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Smith; let me 
here return them my sincere thanks and 
gratitude. 

It was the custom for many years to 
build an ice palace in Montreal in Do- 
minion Square. These carnivals were 
held many years in succession and were 
not only beautiful but a source of great 
pleasure with their glistening walls and 
turreted roofs, but these ice palaces 
were reproduced on picture postcards, 
and sent all over the world. 

Now winter is a touchy topic with the 
Canadians and they thought it hardly a 
good advertisement for them ; the world 
would think Montreal was somewhere 
in the arctic regions and ice palaces 
were done away with, giving as an ex- 



An Englishman 123 

cuse that when the ice palace melted, 
Dominion Square and the Streets near 
were turned into rivers and it was 
sometimes necessary to go to church in 
a boat, but I think that doubtful. Any- 
how this year an enormous ice palace 
has been built and it is believed the cus- 
tom will be revived. 

IN A MONTREAL CONVENT. 

During my visit to Montreal an op- 
portunity occurred of my seeing the 
ceremony of taking the black veil by 
a novice in a Convent close by. Long 
before daylight I was awakened by a 
priest I had made friends with ; together 
we tramped through the snow to the 
convent; the clouds were close and 
murky, gusts of wind whirled the snow 
round our heads, a more dismal walk I 
never had. At last we reached a large 
white building, surrounded by a high 



124 Impressions of 

wall with massive gates, over the en- 
trance was a dim lamp. Passing 
through a wicket door, we mounted the 
steps of the chapel ; near the door about 
seven or eight spectators were waiting, 
mostly relations of the postulants. On 
the altar, tall candles were burning, the 
rest of the building was in darkness. 

On the right side of the chancel was a 
return, nearly as large as the body of 
the Chapel, separated from it by a grat- 
ing of diagonal bars of wood, like a lat- 
tice work. This return was appropri- 
ated to the devotions of the Nuns, who 
were of a very austere order ; they were 
never allowed beyond the walls, or to 
see or hear the people of the outer 
world, save through these bars. I ob- 
tained a place on the steps leading to 
the pulpit opposite the grating and 
waited with interested patience the 
solemn scene. 



An Englishman 125 

The Bishop in a gorgeous robe of gold 
brocade and covered with the insignia of 
his office, entered the chancel by a pri- 
vate door, two boys preceded him swing- 
ing censers of burning incense and 
chanting in a low monotonous voice, 
twelve priests followed in his train. 
High Mass was then performed with all 
its imposing ceremony — distant, unseen 
choirs joining from the interior of the 
convent. As the sound of the bell which 
announces the elevation of the host 
ceases, the folding doors within the 
grating of the return are thrown open, 
and the postulants enter with a meas- 
ured step. They are clothed from head 
to foot in white, with white roses in 
their hair and in their hands; sixty 
Nuns, two and two follow in solemn pro- 
cession, but in black robes; each carries 
a lighted taper and a prayer book; as 
they enter they chant the hymn to the 



12 6 Impressions of 

Virgin, and range themselves along the 
wall, thirty each side ; their voices swell- 
ing like a moaning wind and echoing 
sadly from the vaulted roof. 

The postulant advances up the centre 
of the return (there was only one to- 
day) near to the grating, bows to the 
host, and is exhorted by the Bishop : he 
speaks, she sinks on her knees and re- 
mains still. 

Four sisters carry in the veil, a pall 
of crape and velvet. While they bear it 
round, each Nun bends to the ground as 
it passes ; it is then placed near the pos- 
tulant, and the priest performs a serv- 
ice like that of the burial of the dead. 
Thirty dark statues on either side give 
the responses in a fixed key of intensely 
mournful intonation unlike the voice of 
living woman. One might almost fancy 
those sombre figures pieces of con- 
trived machinery, but under each black 



An Englishman 127 

shroud there throbs a human heart. 
School them as you may, whip them, 
crush every tender yearning of love the 
young bosom feels, break the elastic 
spirit, chase love and hope and happi- 
ness from the temple of their mind, bury 
them in the convent's gloomy walls, still 
under each black shroud will throb a 
human heart. Oh! the shame, the pity, 
that such things are. 

The postulant receives the sacrament, 
then she rises, advances close to the 
grating, and kneels down before a small 
open lattice, she throws aside her veil, 
and looking calmly at the host which the 
Bishop holds before her eyes, repeats 
the vows after his dictation. 

She is young, not more than eighteen, 
with eyes of deep blue, a lovely face, 
with beautiful fair hair flowing over her 
shoulders, her graceful figure arrayed 
in white. And her voice — I can never 



12 8 Impressions of 

forget that voice ; there was no faltering, 
it was high and clear as a silver bell, but 
oh, so desolate, as if it spoke farewell 
to the world forever; the pealing organ 
and the chorus drown her sobs, but un- 
der the black shroud there throbs a 
human heart — as if that heart would 
break. 

I was afterwards told the cause of 
this girl in her youth and beauty taking 
the veil. Her father was an Officer in 
the French Army, her mother had died 
when she was four; her father devoted 
to his regiment, she was all alone. She 
did not care to mix much in the gaieties 
of the city; with her beauty, her good- 
ness, her winning ways and cheerful 
spirit she was much sought after, al- 
most spoilt. Many begged her hand in 
marriage, but she only tossed back her 
little head, and shook her pretty hair. 
But a few days before her father died 



An Englishman 129 

they attended a ball and there she met, 
among other guests, the officers of one 
of the ships of the Eoyal Navy. One of 
them did not seem to enter into the 
gaieties of the evening and did not dance 
until near the close, when he got intro- 
duced to her. As soon as the set was 
over, he sat talking with her, and then 
took leave of the party. She was flat- 
tered at being the only person he had 
sought and was struck with his noble 
bearing and conversation. A day or 
two afterwards he called at her house; 
she was at home and alone ; poor girl, in 
her short life she had never seen any- 
one like him before, she was proud and 
happy. Her love and confidence in him, 
her undisguised preference joined with 
a purity that could not be mistaken, won 
him. He saw that her mind was being 
strengthened and developed under his 
influence, he felt that he was essential 



130 Impressions of 

to lier happiness, and he felt she was to 
his ; they had no secrets from each other. 
So passed the winter. 

It was the morning of their wedding, 
the view over the broad rich valley is 
beautiful to-day ; the young summer had 
painted earth in all her choicest colour- 
ing, but they do not observe it, he joy- 
ous with love, she flushed with happy 
hope; until to-day it has been a time of 
eager anxiety to him, of joyful antici- 
pation for her. 

The carriage arrives to take them to 
the church; suddenly he turns pale, he 
trembles, he falls, heart disease — ^he's 
dead. 

The summer evening of her land has 
but little twilight, the sun like a globe 
of fire seems to drop from the sky be- 
hind the earth and leaves a sudden dark- 
ness. So sets the sun of hope, but the 



An Englishman 131 

night that fell upon her soul had never 
a morning. 

The Te Deum has been sung, then by 
the safe door by which she came in, she 
goes out ; no one will ever see her again. 

Churches of all denominations are ex- 
tremely numerous in Montreal; it looks 
as though it was either very good or 
very bad; I do not think it is one or the 
other. 

Winter is the great time in Montreal, 
providing you are not a poor emigrant ; 
they simply long for the tinkle of the 
sleigh bells and the sight of the pure 
white snow. Canadians realize the 
blessing of the deep, long continued 
snow, the value of which if it did no 
more than keep down dust, would be a 
real blessing; but it shields and fertilizes 
the ground, distributes water gradually, 
provides broad bridges over rivers and 



132 Impressions of 

lakes and allows the easiest and most 
pleasant of all possible travelling. A 
sort of enchantment prevails, diminish- 
ing the immense size of the world, and 
people seem happy and bright, little 
children come out with their sleds, small 
boys are pelting each other with snow 
balls, their cheeks fresh with health, 
their eyes dancing with laughter. 
Everything reminds you that Canadians 
are happiest in the winter. At the Vic- 
toria Rink are to be seen the famous 
fancy dress carnivals, which are a most 
picturesque sight. 

It is impossible to write of Montreal 
without mentioning the celebrated 
Lachine Rapids ; they are the most peril- 
ous of all the St. Lawrence Rapids, the 
river making a drop of forty-five feet, 
and the channel being set with jagged 
rocks, that would cause instant destruc- 
tion to any craft diverging but a hair- 



An Englishman 133 

breadth from the one tortuous passage, 
which alone makes navigation possible, 
and then only by a thoroughly experi- 
enced pilot. The Lachine Eapids were 
navigated by a steamer for the first time 
on the 19th of August, 1841, and since 
that date many thousands of people 
have felt the thrill of what is a most ex- 
citing experience, although the danger, 
which is real and ever present, does not 
appear so evident to the average 
uninitiated passenger. On leaving La- 
chine the increased speed is soon 
noticeable and a drag on the boat inti- 
mates the force of the waters some lit- 
tle time before the white breakers of 
the Eapids appear; gathering speed 
with every foot of the journey, the 
vessel at last feels the full tremendous 
power of the river as surrounded by 
angry waves on every side, the noise of 
which almost drowns the voice. It 



134 Impressions of 

rushes through what appears to be a 
rock strewn cauldron of boiling water; 
wicked looking rocks appear to bar 
further passage, only to be left on the 
right or the left as the boat obeys the 
pilot's guiding hand, whilst whirlpools 
and seething eddies here and there tell 
of the many deep fissures in the river 
bed. 

The downward course is distinctly 
felt as the boat descends, the sensation 
being almost as if the vessel were go- 
ing down a flight of steps (as in truth 
it is), only without any actual bumping 
or jolting; no one should rest with but 
one experience, as the eye is too busy 
noticing the surroundings on the first 
trip to allow full realization of the re- 
lentless forces surrounding the boat. 
The second or third trip will prove far 
more exciting, as one is then better able 
to appreciate the iron nerve and steady 



An Englishman 135 

hand of the Indian pilot, which alone 
saves the vessel and its living freight 
from instant destruction. 

For nearly twenty years Canada had 
suffered from the persistent attacks of 
the famous cruel tribe of Indians called 
the Iroquois. The French population 
in the whole colony was less than three 
thousand souls, and they were only 
saved from destruction by the fact that 
their settlements were grouped around 
three fortified posts, Quebec, Three 
Rivers and Montreal. To the Iroquois, 
Canada had become indispensable, and 
they determined if they could to destroy 
the French Colony, their policy being a 
persistent attack on the outskirts of the 
different settlements. This became in 
time a perfect scourge to the French 
settlers, who saw no way of escape 
from this terrible condition. Outside 
the fortifications there was no safety 



136 Impressions of 

for a moment, and a universal terror 
seized the people. 

When things were in this condition, a 
young French officer of the Montreal 
garrison appeared on the scene. He 
formed a desperate plan. Shortly be- 
fore, it had been discovered that twelve 
hundred Iroquois warriors were on the 
eve of descending on Montreal and Que- 
bec with the object of wiping out the 
whole colony. This young French offi- 
cer, whose name was Allam Daulac, 
formed a desperate plan. He proposed 
to meet the Indians, and waylay them 
on their descent of the river Ottawa, 
and fight them to death. He asked for 
a party of volunteers. Sixteen of the 
young men of Montreal caught his 
spirit, determined to join him, and gain- 
ing the Governor's consent, made their 
wills, confessed, and received the sacra- 
ment, binding themselves by oath to 



An Englishman 137 

fight to the death, and receive no quar- 
ter. 

As they knelt for the last time before 
the altar in the Chapel of the Hotel 
Dieu, that sturdy little population of 
pious Indian-fighters gazed on them with 
enthusiasm. 

The spirit of this enterprise was 
purely that of the Middle Ages. Hon- 
our, adventure and faith had to do with 
its motive and inspiration. Daulac was 
a knight of the New World. The names, 
ages and occupations of the young men 
are still in the old register of the Parish 
at Montreal. 

Leaving Montreal in their canoes, 
they at last entered the mouth of the 
Ottawa and slowly advanced up the 
stream. They soon passed the swift 
current at Carillon, and after much toil 
and travail, reached the foot of the 
rapid called the Long Sault. Here they 



138 Impressions 

found an old ruined fort, which they took 
possession of, and were soon joined by 
a small band of Hurons and Algonquins, 
who, hearing of their intention, had fol- 
lowed them up the river to share in their 
victory or defeat. 

Here a few days later they were be- 
sieged by an immense body of the Iro- 
quois, and for five days, through 
hunger, thirst, and want of sleep, shut 
up in their narrow fort, they fought and 
prayed by turns, and here at last they 
died, but not until they had given the 
fierce savages such a dreadful lesson 
that they never forgot it. If seventeen 
Frenchmen and five Indians behind a 
few logs, could hold twelve hundred war- 
riors at bay for five days, what might 
they not expect from their compatriots 
behind their walls of stone ? 

Daulac's heroic, if reckless, effort had 
saved the colony. 



CHAPTER ni 

TORONTO 

TORONTO may really boast of a 
tone of society above that of most 
provincial towns; among the people 
there are many who by their acquire- 
ments, talents and refinement would be 
ornaments anywhere. In Canada and in 
England, also, they are too well known 
to need any commendation, their ex- 
ample and influence are proved most use- 
ful by the enlightenment and good man- 
ners of the residents. 

The standard of character, the domes- 
tic arrangements and habits of the peo- 
ple, are formed strictly on the model of 
the Mother Country; they look to her 

139 



140 Impressions of 

with reverence and affection; well may- 
she be proud of their loyalty. 

In a steamer I crossed the lake and 
went seven miles up the Niagara Eiver 
to Queenstown, thence eight miles of rail- 
way to the Falls. During the war, this 
district was the scene of several very 
bloody and gallant actions, between the 
English and Americans ; they seem to be 
highly satisfactory to both parties, for 
each claim the victory and they have 
contended for the laurels ever since with 
the same pertinacity with which they 
disputed the battle ground and with the 
same doubtful result. One thing is cer- 
tain, the Americans failed in making any 
serious permanent impression on any 
part of the country. 

Perhaps the mutual injury was about 
equal, their loss of Buffalo being bal- 
anced by that of Little York on the side 
of the English; each had to mourn the 



An Englishman 141 

loss of many brave soldiers. Sir Isaac 
Brock was the most remarkable of these ; 
he commanded the British force at the 
battle of Queenstown, where he fell : the 
Canadian Parliament erected a pillar to 
his memory on the scene of his victory. 

Queenstown is but a poor place ; being 
on the frontier, it has frequently suf- 
fered in the struggles between the two 
countries. At the entrance of the Niag- 
ara Eiver, or as it should be called, the 
continuation of the St. Lawrence, is 
Fort Niagara, a place of considerable 
strength and importance. I saw there 
for the first time, the flag of the stars 
and stripes, and the soldiers in their 
grey uniforms. On the English side 
Fort Massassagua guards the river; be- 
hind it is the town of Niagara, with its 
docks and foundry, churches and three 
thousand people. 

At the Western end of Lake Ontario is 



142 Impressions of 

Burlington Bay containing the towns of 
Dundas and Hamilton ; both of them are 
rapidly growing. The waters of the 
Niagara Eiver are of a most beautiful 
colour, the blue is as clear and soft as 
that of a summer sky. Up to Queens- 
town the banks are low, and the country 
around flat ; hence to the Falls the flood 
lies between high, abrupt cliifs. On the 
Canada side, rich tracts of park-like 
scenery extend for many miles inland ; a 
great portion is cleared, but there still 
remain many of the magnificent old 
forest trees which once sheltered the peo- 
ple of the departed race. The service 
of the country rises in sheppies of good 
table land, from but little above the level 
of the lake to the undulating grounds 
which spread about the falls, nearly 
three hundred feet higher. 

The story of Laura Secord is one of 
the most popular historical actions re- 



An Englishman 143 

corded in connection with this part of 
Canada. She was the woman who made 
the desperate day's journey, through a 
trackless forest, to warn the Canadian 
soldiers of the approach of the Amer- 
icans. Laura Secord's husband, who 
was a cripple, brought home to her the 
startling news that the American Gen- 
eral, Boerstler, was approaching with 
the object of surprising the British 
troops, who, unaware of his proximity, 
were stationed at Decaws, a place a 
good day's journey with no roadway, 
from where she dwelt. 

This heroic woman realised the neces- 
sity of someone making that journey, 
and of notifying the troops of their dan- 
ger. Otherwise, they would be taken 
by surprise and the Canadian cause 
would be virtually ruined. 

Quietly gathering some food and pre- 
paring herself for the journey, she bade 



144 Impressions of 

her husband good-bye, and slinging a 
wooden bucket upon each arm, as if go- 
ing out to milk her cows, in order to 
deceive the American sentinels, whom 
she had to pass, she went out into the 
bright dawn of the Canadian summer. 
There was purpose in her heart, and she 
set her face forward to the work she had 
in hand; and by a clever ruse eluding 
the sentinels, she reached the deeps of 
the forest. Once there and out of sight 
she dropped her buckets and sped 
through the woods, heedless of danger 
of pursuit, or the attacks of wild ani- 
mals, and the risk she underwent from 
the cruel blind thickets that she had to 
pass ; and though her clothes were torn, 
and her feet cut and bleeding, she never 
paused or lost her courage, until at the 
close of that long day, she reached the 
British camp and told her story. 
The shores of Lake Erie have several 



An Englishman 145 

interesting ports. South of London is 
St. Thomas, another beautiful city and 
county town. 

St. Thomas is especially famous for 
being the home of, and being called after, 
the noted Colonel Thomas Talbot, one 
of the most remarkable characters asso- 
ciated with the history of old Upper 
Canada. His history, suffice it to say 
here, was mysterious to say the least. 
He was the younger son of an old Irish 
family, and first came to light as a fel- 
low aide-de-camp, with no less a per- 
sonage than the great Duke of Welling- 
ton, when as mere lads in their teens, 
they, as cornets in the army, were 
attached to the court of the viceroy at 
Dublin. Later he came out to Canada 
as an aide-de-camp to General Simcoe. 

Here he was unusually successful, as 
it was during his stay in Canada that 
he discovered the spot which was after- 



146 Impressions of 

wards to be the scene of his life's 
labours. Eeturning to Europe he went 
with the British Army on the disastrous 
venture into Holland, under the com- 
mand of the Duke of York. He soon 
rose to be a Colonel and when he had 
achieved that rank he suddenly for no 
known reason sold out his commission 
and retired to Canada, where he re- 
sided on a large estate in the wilderness. 
He applied to the Crown for a large 
grant of land, about five thousand acres, 
and comprising a whole township. This 
he boldly asked for in a direct appeal 
to two members of the Eoyal family, 
sons of George III, asking that it should 
be made a Crown grant in the King's 
name, and then be handed over to him. 
This request, through the Eoyal 
favour, was granted ; and settling on his 
estate near St. Thomas at a place now 
called Port Talbot he approached the 



An Englishman 147 

Government of Upper Canada, with a 
project he had to bring emigrants out 
from the old country, and settle them 
on his own and upon Government lands. 

His project being received with 
favour, he proceeded to the ports in 
New York and Canada, where the emi- 
grants landed, and in that way, after 
several years, he managed to settle with 
British people a large portion of what 
is now called the Talbot settlement. 

He lived on his estate in an eccentric 
manner, sometimes performing himself 
the most difficult of labour, and living 
in backwoods simplicity. His first res- 
idence, which he called *^The Castle,'' 
was a rude log hut. Here he lived for 
many years the life of a solitary, his 
only companion, a faithful servant, in 
whom his master placed great confi- 
dence. For many years he ruled with 
almost imperial power over his part of 



148 Impressions of 

the country. During the American in- 
vasion of 1812, he commanded the 
militia of his district, and was present 
at Lundy's Lane and Fort Erie. 

Colonel Talbot's abode grew in time 
to be a resort for distinguished visitors 
who came to the province; the Lieuten- 
ant Governors frequently visited him, 
and the Chief Justice was often his 
guest. Among distinguished visitors 
to Castle Malahide were the Duke 
of Eichmond, Sir Peregrine Maitland, 
Lord Aylmer, and Sir John Colborne, 
afterwards Lord Seaton. ^^In spite of 
his rustic dress, his jovial, weather- 
beaten face, and the primitive simplicity, 
not to say rudeness of his dwelling, he 
has in his features, air and deportment, 
that something that stamps him a gen- 
tleman. *' So wrote the noted writer 
Mrs. Jameson when visiting Canada. 
And that something, which thirty-four 



An Englishman 149 

years of solitude has not effaced, lie 
derives, I suppose, from blood and birth ; 
things of more consequence when phil- 
osophically and philanthropically con- 
sidered, than we are apt to allow. 

He must have been, when young, very 
handsome and his resemblance to 
King William IV is so very striking, 
as to be something next to identity. 
'* Colonel Talbot's life," continues 
Mrs. Jameson, ^^has been one of per- 
severing, heroic self-devotion to the 
completion of a magnificent plan, laid 
down in the first instance, and fol- 
lowed up with unflinching tenacity of 
purpose. For sixteen years, he saw 
scarce a human being, except the few 
boors employed in clearing and log- 
ging his land; he himself assumed 
the blanket coat and axe; slept upon 
the bare earth, cooked three meals a 
day for twenty woodsmen, cleaned his 



150 Impressions of 

own boots, washed his own linen, milked 
his own cow, churned his own butter, and 
made and baked his own bread. In ad- 
dition to this, he carried on his farm of 
six hundred acres, upon which he had 
sixteen acres of orchard land, in which 
he planted and reared, with success, all 
the common European fruits, apples, 
plums and cherries, in abundance. 

**He was fond of his garden and in it 
he produced some beautiful varieties of 
roses, which he had brought himself 
from England. Yet family and aristo- 
cratic pride were a prominent feature 
in the character of this remarkable man. 

**In his old age he paid a visit to Eng- 
land, where he renewed his old associa- 
tions with his former friend, the great 
Duke of Wellington, but he soon re- 
turned to his old haunts and died on the 
6th February, 1853, in Ontario.'' 

The career of this remarkable man is 



An Englishman 151 

only one of the many instances of the 
tragedy of life and the vicissitudes of 
fortune, of which these regions of the 
New World have been the stage. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE NOETHWEST INDIANS 

IN a few more years no wild Indians 
will be seen except in the far North. 
Whiskey is the bane which drives the 
savage wild and is the fruitful cause of 
nearly every crime. It is indeed for- 
tunate for us that we have followed the 
good example of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany's servants and have invariably 
kept faith with the Aborigines in all our 
dealings. Honesty is the best policy. 
The Americans have never been so for- 
tunate in their relations with the poor 
savages and many a bloody scene has in 
consequence been enacted. 

It is not so many years ago that near 
our line a band of Sioux under the lead- 

152 



Impressions 153 

ership of the famous chief, Sitting Bull, 
achieved a victory over a civilised force 
which has no parallel in the annals of 
any recent war between civilized and 
savage troops, and I cannot do better 
than give the most authentic account e 'er 
given, that is, the one by the Marquis 
of Lome, which was given him by Sit- 
ting Bull himself. 

General Custer, one of the most gal- 
lant officers of that gallant Northern 
Army — a man distinguished for intre- 
pidity and skill in the war against the 
Southern Confederacy, had been ap- 
pointed to a command of Cavalry not 
far from our frontier line. As is too 
often the case, unnecessary quarrels had 
led to unnecessary fighting between 
Uncle Sam's boys and the braves under 
Sitting Bull. 

General Custer, coming upon their 
camp in a place chosen with rare skill 



154 Impressions of 

by tlie savages, impetnonsly ordered an 
attack. Accounts vary of the struggle 
wMch ensued, but the story must neces- 
sarily come from one side only, because 
no American soldier lived to relate the 
tale. 

The Indian account in Sitting BulPs 
words is as follows: — 

** During the summer previous to the 
one in which General Custer attacked 
us, he sent a letter to me, telling me that 
if I did not go to an agency he would 
fight me; and I sent word back to him 
by his messenger that I did not want to 
fight but only to be left alone. I told 
him at the same time that if he wanted 
to fight, that he should go and fight those 
Indians who wanted to fight him. 

^^ Custer then sent me word again 
(this was now in the winter) you would 
not take my former offer, now I am go- 
ing to fight you this winter ; I sent word 



An Englishman 155 

back and said just what I had said be- 
fore, that I did not want to fight, and 
only wanted to be left alone, and that 
my camp was the only one that had not 
fought against him. General Custer 
again sent a message, I am fitting up 
my waggons and soldiers and am deter- 
mined to fight against you in the spring. 
I thought that I would try him again, 
and sent him a message saying, I did 
not want to fight, that I wanted first of 
all to go to British territory, and after 
I had been there and come back, if he 
still wanted to fight me, that I would 
fight then. Custer sent me back word 
and said^ — ^I will fight you in eight 
days! 

**I then saw that it was no use, that I 
would have to fight, so I sent him word 
back, all right ; get all your men mounted 
and I will get all my men mounted and 
we will have a fight. The Great Spirit 



156 Impressions of 

will look on, and the side that is in the 
wrong will be defeated. 

**I began to get ready, and sent twenty 
young men to watch for the soldiers. 
Five soon came back with word that 
Custer was coming, the other fifteen 
stopped to watch his movements. When 
Custer was quite close ten young men 
came in. When he had advanced still 
closer two more of them came in ; leav- 
ing three still to watch the troops. We 
had got up a medicine dance for war in 
the Camp, and just as it was^coming to 
an end two of the young men who had 
stopped out, came in with the word that 
Custer and the troops were very close, 
and would be upon the Camp in the 
morning. That night we all got ready 
for the battle. My young men all 
buckled on their ammunition belts, and 
we were busy putting strong stick in 
our coup sticks. Early at sunrise two 



An Englishman 157 

young men who had been out a short 
way on the prairie, came to me and told 
me that from the top of a high butte 
they had seen the troops advancing in 
two divisions. I then had all the horses 
driven into the camp and corralled be- 
tween two lodges. 

** About noon the troops came up, and 
at once rushed upon the camp. They 
charged in two separate divisions, one 
at the upper end, whilst the other divi- 
sion charged about the middle of the 
camp. The latter division struck the 
camp in the centre of the 250 lodges of 
the Uncapupa Sioux, and close to the 
door of my own lodge. At the time 
the troops charged I was making medi- 
cine for the Great Spirit to help us and 
fight upon our side, and as I heard the 
noise and knew what it was 1 came out. 
When I had got to the outside of my 
lodge I noticed that this division had 



158 Impressions of 

stopped suddenly close to the outer side 
of the Uncapupa Camp, and then they 
sounded a bugle and the troops fired into 
the Camp. 

**I at once set my wife upon my best 
horse, put my war bonnet on her head 
and told her to run away with the rest 
of the women. She did so, but forgot 
to take the baby (a girl) ; after she had 
gone a little way she thought of the child 
and came back for it. I gave the child 
to her and she went off again. 

'^I now put a flag upon a lodge pole, 
and lifting it as high as I could, I 
shouted out as loud as I was able to my 
own men : I am Sitting Bull ; follow me ! 
I then rushed at the head of them up to 
the place where I thought Custer was, 
and just as we got close up to the troops 
they fired again. When I saw that the 
soldiers fired from their saddles, and 
did but little damage to us, I ordered 



An Englishman 159 

all my men to rush through their ranks 
and break them, which they did, but 
failed to break the ranks although we 
suifered as little damage as before. I 
then shouted to them to try again, and 
putting myself at the head of my men 
we went at them again. This time, 
although the soldiers were keeping up 
a rapid fire from their horses, we 
knocked away a whole corner and killed 
a great many, though I had only two 
men killed. After this we charged the 
same way several times, and kept driv- 
ing them back for about half a mile, 
killing them very fast. After forcing 
them back there only remained ^ve sol- 
diers of this division, and the interpreter 
alive, and I told my men to let them 
live. Then the interpreter, the man 
that the Indians call Hhe white,' 
shouted out in Sioux and said — 'Custer 
is not in this division, he is in the other.' 



i6o Impressions of 

I then ordered all my men to come on 
and attack the other division. 

**They did so and followed me. The 
soldiers of this division fired upon ns as 
soon as we got within range, but did us 
little harm. When we had got quite 
close and we were just going to charge 
them a great storm broke right over us, 
the lightning was fearful, and struck a 
lot of the soldiers and horses, killing 
them instantly. I then called out to my 
men to charge the troops and shouted 
out — The Great Spirit is on our side; 
look how He is striking the soldiers 
down! My men saw this and they all 
rushed upon the troops, who were mixed 
up a good deal. About forty of the sol- 
diers had been dismounted by the light- 
ning killing and frightening their horses, 
and these men were soon trampled to 
death. It was just at this time that we 
charged them, and we easily knocked 



An Englishman i6i 

them off their horses, and then killed 
them with our coup sticks. In this way 
we killed all the division, with the excep- 
tion of a few who tried to get away, but 
were killed by the Sioux before they 
could get very far. 

**A11 through the battle the soldiers 
fired very wild and only killed twenty- 
five Sioux. 

**I did not recognise General Custer 
in the fight, he must have been killed in 
the first attack, as we found his body, or 
what all the Indians thought was Cus- 
ter's body about the place that the first 
attack was made. I do not think there 
is any truth in the report that he shot 
himself, although I saw two soldiers 
shoot themselves. The Sioux were fol- 
lowing them and in a few moments would 
have caught them, but they shot them- 
selves with their pistols in the head. 

** There were seven hundred and nine 



1 62 Impressions of 

Americans killed. We counted them by- 
putting a stick on each body, and then 
taking the sticks up again and counting 
them. We counted seven hundred and 
seven carbines/' 

So ended Sitting BulPs story of the 
fight. 

It was greatly to the credit of the 
American people, that when years after- 
wards they wished to get rid of Sitting 
Bull, who had taken refuge on Canadian 
soil, amnesty was granted to him and 
his people and in reply to a letter ad- 
dressed by the Canadian Government 
as to his probable treatment should he 
surrender to the Americans, Mr. Ewarts, 
the United States Secretary, replied, 
**He will be treated as a great nation al- 
ways treats its prisoners of war.'' 

The Indians cannot be classed as New 
Canadians, yet it is important to know 
in what position they really stand under 



An Englishman 163 

their new conditions. One of tlie largest 
tribes to-day is known as the Blackfoot, 
a very warlike and bloodthirsty tribe 
they are too. At the time of the Eiel 
Eebellion of 1885 people watched with 
great anxiety lest they should plunge 
into the fray. If they had, it would 
have been far more serious than it was. 
The Canadian people to-day are under 
a debt of gratitude to this tribe, because 
although tempted, they resisted and kept 
peace. 

The Indians still keep up some of 
their most notable customs, such as the 
sun dance, and the dog feast, where they 
cook and eat dogs. They have their 
secret societies and their medicine men. 
In knowledge of or respect for the laws 
of health they have made little progress. 
If a child is hot with fever, the parents 
let it run naked in the snow; many die 
who could be cured if properly treated. 



164 Impressions of 

Tuberculosis is one of the great causes 
of mortality, which is increased by their 
habit of living in crowded log houses in 
winter, and the still stuffier tent in sum- 
mer. A war dance is something to be re- 
membered ; it is really more of a prance, 
accompanied by the shouts of the 
dancers and the dull thump of the drum. 
The dancers' costumes are of every pos- 
sible description, generally of gaudy col- 
oured calico, leggins and moccasins 
hidden under a mass of bead work, 
feathers and ribbons, their faces painted 
all colours in stripes. After the men 
have danced, they fall back and their 
place is taken by women. It is to their 
credit there is no more crime amongst 
them than other people. At the same 
time it is due to their respect to that 
brave body of men. The Northern 
Mounted Police. It is extraordinary 
how only two mounted policemen will 



An Englishman 165 

enter an Indian preserve to arrest a 
wrongdoer without suffering any harm. 

Twenty years ago the police had to 
protect the White Man against the In- 
dian, to-day they have to protect the 
Indian against the White man, but the 
protection is inadequate. At some 
towns you will find one officer, two con- 
stables only, to protect them. A Corps 
has been raised by the Federal Govern- 
ment and forms an addition to the little 
standing army of Canada. 

From Calgary to Vancouver is one 
of the most delightful and interesting 
journeys in Canada, through the Eocky 
Mountains. They are grand, more than 
beautiful, gaunt, foreboding things of 
drear strength; the hills are like the 
ruins of a dead world, the stark trees 
are the totems of death. One cannot 
compare them to the beauty of the Alps, 
or the Caucasus range, or the Hima- 



1 66 Impressions of 

layas; they are individual, apart, stren- 
uous, with the teeth of ferocity in them. 
Close by are the gurgling chalky green 
waters of the Bow Eiver. The under- 
growth of the land is matted, wiry and 
tangled with the wonderful colouring of 
autumn tints; there are sad and weedy 
stations. Eed Indians are about, 
swarthy, sitting on their horses, wearing 
red blanket trousers, dirty coats and 
Yankee slouch hats, not so picturesque 
as one sees in Buffalo Bill shows. 

There are few buffalo now on the 
prairies, the thunder of a herd^s hoofs 
is not heard on the baked soil, but here 
and there within a good wire fence are a 
bunch of these once lords of the prairie 
chewing their cud. 

The biggest hotel, a chateau perched 
on a shoulder of rock amongst the pines, 
is one of the fine hotels owned by the 
Canadian Pacific Eailway, and costs 



An Englishman 167 

twenty-five shillings a day, but is as 
good as any hotel — in fact better — in 
London. Every night at ten 'clock the 
orchestra plays ^^God Save the King'* 
and all Britons stand up. I remember 
an American lady who had just arrived 
saying to another, ^^I think it just sweet 
of those Britishers to play, *My Coun- 
try, 'tis of Thee' and all stand up" : it is 
the same tune and some of us who knew 
what it was meant for, smiled. 

The day you journey from Banff to 
Eevelstoke, over the Eockies and over 
the Selkirks you go through nearly two 
hundred miles of heroic hills with tow- 
ering awesome crags above and abysms, 
frothy with torrents, below. It is the 
most enthralling, long stretched pano- 
rama to be seen in the world. The en- 
gine climbs slowly with grunts and 
creaks. Here is a great arch proclaim- 
ing ' ' The Great Divide. ' ' You are 5,296 



1 68 Impressions of 

feet above the level of the sea. Cathe- 
dral Mountain heaves with snow pow- 
dered trow, there is swaying as we crawl 
over a shaky bridge, then we get a vision 
of Kicking Horse Pass, a grey fledged 
rip in the rocks, with brown bodied 
spruce growing from precarious points, 
above the mountains ; below the swirl of 
a foaming, thunderous torrent. At last 
we reach Field, a little place with a fine 
hotel. Here they changed our engine 
for a big heavy one ; down the Kicking 
Horse Pass is the most exhilarating of 
railway jaunts. There is a thrill in it; 
we dived and we curved, we snorted up- 
hill, and rattled down-hill; it's shooting 
the chute for an hour ; it is worth travel- 
ling to Canada, if only for that. 

The run is to the valley of the Colum- 
bia Kiver, first between the pinnacled 
Otter Tail and buttressed Van Home 
ranges, then into the canyon of the 



An Englishman 169 

Kicking Horse. Soon we are on the 
mountain again, breasting the stem 
Selkirks; cascades leap with resentful 
hiss, a gully three hundred feet is 
spanned. 

In the darkness you sweep through 
mountains, and behind is a world of 
awed silence. 

In the morning the hills have lost their 
terror, they are lower and wooded, log 
houses are seen, the river widens into 
a noble, slowly moving stream. There 
are Japs working on the line, moody- 
visaged Indians squat and muse, loose- 
limbed British Columbians drive their 
teams through clouds of dust ; we are on 
the Pacific coast and yonder is the smoke 
of Vancouver. 



CHAPTER V 

EMIGRANTS 

WHAT the amount of emigration is 
from the old Continent to Can- 
ada no one really knows, as so many go 
via Canada to get to the States. The 
emigrants are principally English, Irish 
and German, and I found out that the 
most violent against England and all 
monarchial institutions are emigrants 
themselves and who are the cause of 
the prejudice I have mentioned, and help 
to keep up the dislike and ill-will which 
exists towards us, nor is it to be won- 
dered at. 

The happy, and those with means do 
not go into exile; those who do are 
mostly disappointed men; they form 
170 



Impressions 171 

ideas of liberty and prosperity by emi- 
grating, then when they get to Canada, 
they find out their mistake. They are 
often unable to return and have to 
work at something; they think of their 
homes and friends left behind, which 
makes them more violent in their de- 
nunciation of their own country. Nine 
out of twelve emigrants regret emi- 
grating; the fact is they are no match 
for the keen-witted men they come in 
contact with; to succeed a man must 
do as the Canadians do, and be 
one of them, it is their only chance of 
success. They are really to be pitied — 
they have torn themselves away from all 
old associations and broken the links 
which should have bound them to their 
native land, expecting to find liberty, 
equality and competence in a new coun- 
try ; they discover too late they have not 
nearly so much liberty as they had in 



172 Impressions of 

the country they left. They have severed 
themselves from their friends, to live 
amongst strangers; they have to sacri- 
fice those principles of fair dealing im- 
bibed in their youth, adhered to in their 
manhood, and which are so little under- 
stood in Canada or the States. I would 
not advise any man to break up his home 
and go to Canada, unless he was sure of 
something better. I would advise any 
man earning thirty shillings a week at 
home to stick to it, unless he has some 
other motive in view. You can only get 
on in Canada by sheer force of char- 
acter; above all to the man who drinks, 
stop at home; let those who go dismiss 
from their minds that they will receive 
any help, a man must depend on his own 
unaided resources for success. 

Many of the emigrants that go to Can- 
ada are totally unfit to leave home, and 
do not make any headway ; many are well 



An Englishman 173 

educated and have left comfortable 
homes, but maybe through a quarrel 
with relatives, or a desire to see the 
world have gone out expecting to make 
a fortune without exerting themselves 
and the result is they go to the wall, and 
either send to their friends for their 
fare, or work their way home. 

The average Canadian is, as a rule, 
a big, strong, healthy, happy man. 
Nothing is more conducive to health 
than fresh air and good plain food, and 
the Canadian gets both. 

The season for work on the land is 
comparatively short, so that you have to 
take advantage of every hour and be 
ready to work from early in the morning 
until late at night. A man commencing 
as a farmer will generally get up about 
five, feed the cattle, and be at work on 
the land with his plough by six ; he will 
dine at noon, get to work again at half 



174 Impressions of 

past one, and knock off for the night 
about six. There is little time for recre- 
ation, beyond a pipe of tobacco. One 
does not want it, but is only too thankful 
to rest and sleep. 

Statistics are rather bewildering, but 
as the Nineteenth Century closed, the 
tide of emigration began to flow into the 
west of Canada. In 1899 the total emi- 
gration had been 44,543 and in 1900 only 
23,895, but in 1902 it was 67,379 and in 
1903 it went up to 128,364; in 1904 to 
130,331 and in 1905 to 146,266. In Jan- 
uary to December, 1906, the arrivals 
were 215,912 and in 1909, 390,817. 

The various help societies for emigra- 
tion have made it easy for the very poor 
to emigrate, although it is a question 
whether they are the kind Canada wants 
unless they go straight to a farm and are 
sure of employment. 

It is surprising the number of Amer- 



An Englishman 175 

leans who emigrate to Canada, already 
175,000 farmers from the United States 
have made their homes in Canada. The 
Canadian Government gives absolutely 
free to every settler 160 acres of land, 
and adjoining land can be bought at 
from 6 to 10 dollars per acre. 

The American is not the fresh green 
emigrant that the Englishman is ; before 
the American goes to settle he has 
already spied out the land ; the result of 
this independent investigation is evident 
from the enormous number of American 
citizens actually making their homes in 
Canada. 

It is well known that any man may 
choose a free homestead of 160 acres on 
paying a registration fee of 10 dollars, 
but it is not really his until the end of 
three years, and then only if he has lived 
on it, and cultivated it ; also he must be 
a British subject or become one. 



176 Impressions of 

The country, to which people, espe- 
cially Americans, are flocking is the great 
oblong, lying between the Great Lakes 
and the Eocky Mountains, bounded on 
the south by the United States, and on 
the north by the ever retreating edge of 
an almost uninhabited wilderness. This 
oblong is divided into three provinces, 
namely: Manitoba, Saskatchewan and 
Alberta ; it is a great plain, sloping quite 
imperceptibly towards the .west until it 
reaches a height of 3,000 feet above sea 
level; it is crossed by several great 
rivers, and except in the southwest, is 
watered also by numberless streams and 
lakes, and you can grow almost any- 
thing ; its southern prairie fields produce 
the finest wheat in the world, its cattle 
ranches are famous and dairy farming 
is no less successful. The climate is 
pure, dry and invigorating. 

It has often been remarked that the 



An Englishman 177 

Englisliman in Canada is not so success- 
ful as other nationalities. He is cer- 
tainly not so popular, and it is, I think, 
because he is not more cosmopolitan ; it 
is admitted, education does not count 
much in Canada. As an Englishman, 
one feels ashamed of young fellows sent 
out because they are unmanageable in 
England; they will not settle down to 
work, especially those who have an al- 
lowance, and known as remittance men. 
There are exceptions, but the average 
remittance man is generally a failure. 

Go to the west, there is work for every- 
body; there is no country that has a 
more equable climate, no country where 
the grass is so green or the sky so blue; 
not you who have pleasant homes or 
comfortable billets, you can live comfort- 
ably enough in England; but you poor, 
you toilers who know what it is to earn 
a pittance by the sweat of your brow, 



178 Impressions of 

you honest poor, who know all about the 
bitterness of labour, not you who are 
idlers and loafers or drunkards, — you 
are better off in England where national 
charities will foster your folly and the 
workhouse degrade your declining years. 

You do not stand on the dignity of a 
dead ancestor. There, you must answer 
for yourself. It is what you are, not 
Who was your father! There are thou- 
sands of acres open to settlement for 
those who have small capital, while the 
labourer and the domestic servant are 
certain of employment; they who are 
steady and wise are bound to succeed. 

There are lands of promise and plenty 
in our Canadian Colony which are wait- 
ing for the plough, the axe, and the pick. 

Winnipeg is the favorite point of set- 
tlement, and it is predicted that it will 
one day be the centre of British produc- 






An Englishman 179 

tion, just as London is the centre of 
British consumption. 

Here is this glorious wheat producing 
country. The Dominion Lands ' Act pro- 
vides that free grant of land of 160 acres 
to every head of a family, male or 
female, and a further grant of 160 acres 
to every child, boy or girl, on their 
attaining the age of 18 may be attained 
on simple and easy conditions, the object 
of the Government being to establish a 
population of permanent settlers on the 
land. 

People from all parts of the world are 
going there, but there is enough room in 
Canada to take all our poor surplus pop- 
ulation of England, Wales, Ireland and 
Scotland and give them a chance of hap- 
piness and fortune. 

There are thousands of men and 
women in England to-day who have no 



i8o Impressions 

prospects before them but an ill-fed life 
of drudgery, and thousands who must 
faint and starve on the Highway. 
Surely if they have no lookout here, it 
cannot be much of a risk to go to this 
land of promise beyond the sea. 

There is enough for everybody in the 
English speaking countries of the world, 
if everybody would not insist upon 
elbowing each other to death to the 
smallest corners of Great Britain's vast 
Empire. 



THE END 



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